


"the epic strider shut-down" and other maladaptive coping mechanisms

by Ultimatum



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Therapy, Trauma, Trolls on Earth, bro dies and d takes him in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 12:09:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 56,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18916702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultimatum/pseuds/Ultimatum
Summary: After Bro dies, Dave's left to put himself back together again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey! first multiple chapter fic ive written in a long ass time lol

The bottom line: you've spent years taking yourself apart and putting yourself back together again. Ever since your Bro died, it's been a constant tug-of-war with your inner, baser instincts. To recover or not to recover? That really is the question.

Because even though you've spent years trying to work through the bullshit Bro put you through, you still feel like you're getting nowhere. Like there's still something fundamentally wrong with you, something that may not be visible to others but is painfully present when you examine yourself late into the night. 

Rose says you're not working through your trauma because you're too focused on the outcome, on getting better. You're focused on forgetting about it, not processing it, and you suppose that might be true. 

But every time you try to reach deeper, try to confront the Bro that still lives on inside of you, you end up shutting down. It's him in your brain, flicking switches and killing the lights. Of all the coping mechanisms you picked up during your childhood, this might be the most pervasive: the shut-down.

That's what Karkat calls it anyway. When your eyes turn unfocused, when you become robotic, when it's obvious you've checked out. As a kid, you lived in robo-mode. And back then, it was the best survival tactic you had. Now, it's your greatest weakness.

Someone wants you to talk about how you're feeling? Oh, good luck with that. Someone wants you to be genuine for a few seconds? Funny, that's hilarious. Someone wants you to set boundaries? Laugh out fucking loud.

God, it's pathetic. After all these years, and you still have this slew of shit inside. You doubt yourself, your motivations, you start looking for any explanation with some outside validation and run with it. Sense of self? Never heard of her.

Can you trust your own judgments?

All signs point to no, and the little voice in your head, the one that sounds suspiciously like Bro, reminds you of that fact.

Maybe you're a majorly fucked up person. No, you absolutely are. It feels like no amount of hashing this shit out ever does _shit_ about it. 

How many times have you tried working through what Bro did to you? So many times, you feel like you could fill multiple tomes with your text logs about it. Or multiple editions of said tomes with your therapy sessions. 

And it hurts because you’re failing Karkat. You’re failing yourself. You’re failing everyone who helped you survive those first years after his death, and more than that, you’re failing Bro by rewiring yourself this way. 

What would he say if he could see you now? He’d be angry that you’ve forgotten your place. So.

There’s that. It’s a whole different beast entirely. 

But then there’s Karkat. Who’s currently running his hands over your head as you trip over the mess of thoughts in your mind. You know he can tell you’re all over the place, but he knows better than to say anything. Instead, he scratches your scalp and you release the tension in your shoulders that you didn’t even realize you were keeping. 

It’s a lot. It’s always been a lot. You’re fighting between your desire to change and your desire to stay the same, just because it’s simpler to stop trying. 

Because more than being a fight between two sides of yourself, it’s a fight against your most basic instinct, and that complicates everything exponentially.

And even worse are the times it complicates your relationship with Karkat. When it contaminates the only good, pure thing you’ve ever had for yourself. When you’re having sex and the wrong name almost comes out, when you find yourself making the sort of noises _he_ conditioned you to make. 

You know it would break Karkat’s heart if he knew this about you. If he knew that sometimes, you may not be completely there. That sometimes, it’s performative. For the most part, you don’t even dare to think it to yourself, because that’s wrong. Bad. 

Fuck, what’s wrong with you?

Karkat pauses his tender movements and shifts so he can look into your eyes. You realize you’ve become so tense that he can’t really just let you be anymore.

“You good, Dave?”

Are you? No, you aren’t. But accepting that you aren’t okay isn’t as easy as it should be. Not for someone like you.

Even though you say nothing, Karkat can see through your mask as if it’s not there at all. He hums and does that weird little purring thing he does sometimes, just because he knows it makes you feel better every time. Some of the tension leaves your body and you slump into him, fighting the urge to apologize.

“Thanks,” is what you settle for instead. 

“Any time.” 

Karkat goes back to scratching your head as you try to collect yourself. For a few moments, you try to close your eyes, but the images that flash behind your lids do little to help calm you down. 

Instead, you check your phone. 

You’ve got some messages from Dirk, and you know that it’d be in your best interest to answer him as soon as possible (because deep down, you’re still pulled by that instinct, and he’s your Brother, and therefore part of that force. You can’t help but have the compulsion to listen, to react fast, just to keep yourself in his good graces. Even though you know he’s not like that) but you know you shouldn’t talk to him when you’re in this state.

It’d freak him out. And he’d inevitably blame himself for it. 

You have some messages from Rose and a reminder from D that you need to be back home before it gets too late tonight so he can drive you to therapy tomorrow morning. All good. You don’t have the energy to reply to Rose, so you drop your phone back down to Karkat’s bed and sigh. 

Karkat waits for you to speak.

“I’ll be good soon, don’t worry about it.”

“Are you pulling a Strider again, Dave?” Karkat says it jokingly, but you know he’s serious. What he means: are you suppressing your feelings? That’d be a yes. You’re falling into one of your infamous shut-downs. 

The little airplane of your innocence is crashing into the sea of inner moral turpitude. That moral depravity is you, through and through. 

“Maybe. Might be high-time for a nosedive into Strider shit for a bit.” You try to make sure he doesn’t worry too much. 

Karkat knows that sometimes, turning into _this_ is your only defense against yourself. “I’ll be okay, for real, that’s not just me saying that. I just have… A lot on my mind. And yeah, I know I can talk to you about it, I can see that look on your face and I know you want me to talk to you about it, but I can’t even think it to _myself_ yet, I’m even less able to clue you in on the clusterfuck in my brain without sounding like a total fucking trainwreck.” 

Karkat searches your eyes for another moment before nodding. “I trust you. I trust that you know that I’m here for you. Promise you’ll talk to D about it sometime, or at least Courtney?” 

“Yeah, probably Courtney. I don’t know if I’m there yet with D. Things are still. Screwey.” You have a therapy appointment tomorrow morning, so you resolve to figure out how to bring this up when you’ve hardly touched it mentally, not even with a long, Grinch-length pole. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess, you didn’t sign up for this.”

Karkat looks at you, pointedly. You shouldn’t have said that. “Dave. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I signed up for all of you, doofus.”

“Even though I’m a twenty-year-old who still lives in my Uncle’s house?” You wrap your arms around his middle and squeeze. Once you’re sure your face is sufficiently covered by his massive sweater, you say, “Yeah well, you’re also the best thing that’s ever happened to me too. What’dya say to that, huh?”

“That I’m pretty damn fucking lucky,” Karkat says, squeezing you back. 

You sigh into him, feeling luckier than he could ever claim to be. He’s a real catch. And his ass is pretty great too, you gotta say. 

For a bit, you sit together, but the shit in your brain continues to buzz and buzz and buzz. Bro’s been dead for what, four years? Yet, it’s like you always come back to this. Courtney would point out that you’re still only 20, that you have plenty of room to grow, but sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in this sense of endless hopelessness when your progress, or lack thereof, is concerned. 

Goddammit. He really did thoroughly fuck you up before he had the decency to die, huh.

Karkat drives you back that night, and you kiss in his car for a few minutes before he breaks away from you and smiles. “See you in a few days?”

“Yeah, see you dude, good luck with your family dinner thing tomorrow.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “I need all the luck I can get. It’ll be a fucking miracle if I don’t end up murdering Kankri with my bare hands.”

You kiss him once more. And once more. 

“Ok, ok, I really should get going.” Even though you don’t want to leave, you do. You step out and head up to the apartment, but.

Suddenly, it feels like you’ve been dunked underwater or something.

Fucking hell. Of course this would happen now. Karkat drives away, and you go dizzy with a sudden, acute panic. Hand goes to the wall. You squat a bit, waiting for your vision to stop tunneling. The air changes, becomes heavy. The warm air is deceptively familiar, like you’re suddenly in a dream, or worse: a memory.

What year is it? How old are you? Your day of mental instability is steadily coalescing into a full-on freak-out and you try your best to calm the _fuck_ down. 

_This is all your fault, get the fuck back home. Roof. Roof, now._

The black around your vision slowly bleeds away and you get up. Get up. _Get up_.

Fuck, what did Courtney call these? Emotional flashbacks? You need to get back to the apartment, you need D. Or you need to isolate, to hide yourself from D and Dirk and anyone else who may see you like this, in this shameful, pathetic state.

You somehow manage to get up to the apartment, even though you feel so small and so afraid. You slip inside without making a noise and click the lock shut. The lights are off, and you make no move to turn them on. 

The primitive, scared part of your brain still isn’t sure if you’re here, or there, or what year it is, or if Bro is truly dead, or anything like that. You’re just sure that you need to protect yourself, you need to get into your room as fast as possible-

In a second, you go from creeping along the walls in the dark to on the ground. If the pain on your side is anything to go by, you must’ve bumped into a piece of furniture you’d completely forgotten about in your haze. 

The pain sets something else off in you. You’re losing your cool, god fucking dammit you’re losing your cool completely. 

If things couldn’t get any worse, the lights suddenly flick on, and you scramble back until your back hits the wall. A wheeze escapes you before you’re able to shut yourself up, and your jaw aches with the effort it takes to keep yourself fucking quiet after that screw-up. 

“Dave? Are you alright?”

It’s D. Who else would it be? Bro is dead. He’s been dead, right? He’s so dead, and has been for so long, that there’s literally no reason to be freaking out like this. But you are. You’re losing your marbles and D is here, he’s watching and seeing and realizing what a big mistake it’s been taking care of you these past few years, because you’ve been nothing but a burden and

“Shit.” The word leaves you, along with all the air in your lungs. You feel along the wall behind you, even though you’re not sure you can stand without blacking out, and pull yourself up. “Fuck.”

“Hey, hey, take it easy, are you hurt?” D holds his hands out and tries to take a step forward, but you flinch hard enough that the wall thumps under your back, and he gets the message that you can’t be approached right now.

God, what’s wrong with you? He’s just trying to help. But you’re doing this, like a child. You huff out a laugh that sounds more than a little self-deprecating and shove off from the wall, forcing yourself to stand steady.

“Yeah, yeah. Fine.” 

D stands there, looking as hopeless as he probably feels. Even your Uncle doesn’t know what to fucking do with you. Even he doesn’t know how to help. You’re _twenty_ for fucks sake, not twelve. At what point will you stop feeling like a stupid kid stuck in some sick feedback loop?

“Sorry,” you say compulsively, unable to stop yourself from apologizing like you usually try to do. The shut-down resumes the moment you come to your senses and begin to deescalate your body from the flashback. You unclench your jaw and school your features, and the speed at which you’re able to block out all that pain seems to startle D.

Yeah. It’s probably a little freaky. Makes you feel like a robot sometimes.

Or a puppet.

Funny.

D tries his best though. He’s always trying his best. So why can’t you do better, too? “If you need me, you know where I am Dave. You’re safe here. I’ll be in my room, and if it makes you feel better, lock your door or something, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

He moves slowly, afraid to set you off again, and leaves you alone. If anything, you’re at least glad that Dirk wasn’t in the room to witness your mini-meltdown. 

Talk about embarrassing.

After a minute of standing completely alone, you make your way to your room and debate on whether or not you want to lock the door. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that assures you that you’re at least a little safe, but for some reason, it doesn’t help now.

Maybe it’s because D offered it. It feels almost like a challenge. Like D knows you can’t handle it being unlocked and is calling you out for it, like Bro would do to you when you were younger. The temptation of safety is so close, but you’re supposed to be stronger than that temptation and refuse it. It’s an unspoken rule.

So you leave the door unlocked, even though your heart hammers in your chest, half-expecting someone, anyone, to come through and give you a beatdown for being so fucking weak today.

For the next few hours, you lay in bed and listen to the CDs on your nightstand. Tomorrow. You’ll think about it tomorrow. Message back everyone tomorrow. For now, you need to shut all this shit down so you can make it through the absolute shame you feel burning inside of you.

Maybe tomorrow, you won’t be such a disappointment. It’s a feeble hope, but you cling to it. 

Bro may be long gone, but he lives on inside of you. Your DNA. Your very reflexes and brain structure. It always comes back to this: he never truly left you.

And you don’t know where the Bro inside you ends and where the real you actually begins.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are some more graphic references to sexual abuse in this chapter, be careful! and lots of victim blaming from dave towards himself ):
> 
> that being said, ive never cranked out fic chapters this fast before lol

When you wake up, you have a wicked bad stomach-ache. It’s typical for what you usually experience, post-meltdown and all. In a way, it’s how your body punishes you for all the extra tension you keep locked inside. 

Before you can dwell on it, you roll out of bed and cancel your phone alarm a whole two seconds before it’s set to go off. The little perks of hypervigilance: your inner clock is fucking _fantastic_. 

You can hear Dirk and D bickering in the kitchen, probably over breakfast. 

Maybe Dirk burnt his toast again today, or maybe it was D who burnt _Dirk’s_ toast, and how dare he? Doesn’t he know that only Dirk is allowed to burn his own toast? You fidget with your phone and check your notifications, suddenly overcome with embarrassment as you remember what you did. 

Does D remember last night? Of course he does. You fucking flipped right in front of him, how could he not remember something like that? 

Fuck, you hate losing it where other people can see. Having the big ol’ “abuse survivor” thing stamped on you day-to-day is bad enough, HUMILIATING enough, but somehow, not being able to have the decency to keep it to yourself? That shit hurts even more.

So you fuck around, get dressed, play some music, and try to distract yourself to avoid thinking about all the things D’s probably been thinking about you since last night. 

You can’t avoid him forever, though. When he calls your name, summoning you for breakfast, you slip into the kitchen almost instantly. Any humiliation aside, you’re still pretty well programed to obey direct orders from authority figures like D. And Bro, but, well, he hasn’t been around in a while to tell you to do shit, has he? 

You still act like he is around to do that crap though. It’s a work in progress. 

“You sleep okay, kiddo?” D tries to flip an omelet as he speaks to you, groaning when a good chunk of it falls to the floor. Dirk watches from his seat by the kitchen pass-through, obviously enjoying how bad D is at cooking.

“Yeah.” You say, despite the fact that you really didn’t, your stomach hurts, and you feel like shit. “Do we have bagels right now?”

Ah. A classic. The Avoidant Maneuver. In which you casually sidestep the topic that makes you uncomfortable, in a way that is totally obvious to anyone who’s known you for more than two seconds.

D nods over to the pantry, and you force yourself to open the cabinet. You knew perfectly well that you guys still had bagels, but you still haven’t gotten to the point where you can actually just… Look for food yourself. 

Asking permission, even in this weird, roundabout way, is still something you have to do. You just. You just need to, okay? It’s stupid. You’ve lived with them for how many years now? And you’re _still_ afraid that one day they’re going to get mad at you for eating the food they bought _for_ you? 

That they’ll take it back from you or something?

Gee, thanks lizard brain. 

Dirk peaces out at one point, probably to head to his room. He has a million commissions lined up, because he’s a productive adult, even if he’s only semi-functioning. 

And what are you doing with your adulthood?

Yeah, wasting it, having flashbacks in front of your Uncle like a child. Still taking online college classes because you can’t be outside long enough to attend actual, normal people school. 

Okay, pause. Courtney would probably be mad at you for making such sweeping generalizations about your own progress. You can hear her voice in your head, and you try to cling onto that advice.

_Four years ago, you were hardly allowed to be human. You were like a fucking lifeless zombie; you couldn’t be present for more than a few minutes at a time without zoning out. This? This isn’t nothing. You’re getting somewhere._

But not quickly enough, you counter (countering your therapist in your thoughts? dude, why). You should be fine by now, right?

You should have moved on by now, right?

Oh. D is talking to you. 

You open the metaphorical shutters, turn “on,” and feel your eyes focus on the world around you, your body slowly becoming more and more real as you shake yourself out of your thoughts. 

He can tell you were gone for a bit, because he searches your face before (presumably) repeating himself. “Is it okay if we leave in like… Ten minutes?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

D shakes his head and smiles at you, all gentle and forgiving. Even though you’re failing him. Yourself. Dirk. _Bro._ Your own inner inconsistencies make you want to vomit, who are you really trying to please here? 

“You’re more than fine. It’s still early, I’m not all the way here yet either.”

D picks up his mug, an ugly pink monstrosity with the words “im not me till ive had my coffee!” printed on the side and toasts the air in your direction as if proving his own point. You can’t help but snort at him as he takes a long, dramatic sip of his coffee. 

“Oh my god, you’re so embarrassing,” you say, glad he didn’t call you out on apologizing again. Being directly confronted by your own behavior makes you flighty on the best of days. On days like this… You don’t know where you’d be at.

You eat in silence and feel the familiar rush of emptiness come over you while you start to plan out your therapy session in your brain. With what you told Karkat yesterday…

You told him you’d try to bring it up. But again, you still haven’t really let yourself think it much at this point. It puts you in a full-body chokehold, mind, body, and soul. Locking that panic up tight is the only thing that keeps you from spilling your water all over yourself as your hands begin to shake from the overflow of anxiety. 

D looks at you. Can he tell you’re secretly panicking? That you’re thinking of the big, scary thing you’d never fucking want to tell him about?

Yeah, everyone knows you’re an Abuse Survivor™, but no one but Rose has told you that they suspect more. That there’s another “s” in there, a scarier, bigger beast that rips you up from the inside out every time you even remotely let it pass your mind.

Sexual abuse. The big scary S E X. You know you owe it to Karkat to try, but it takes everything you’ve got to not stop, drop, and roll right back to the safety of your own room. Courtney knows plenty of things. You’ve been with her for years at this point.

But you’re kind of afraid that this’ll be the thing that turns her against you, as stupid as that sounds. You’ve done things with Bro. Willingly. Sometimes, you were desperate for that attention. 

In your mind, when you imagine how this’ll play out, you picture her recoiling in disgust. _You let me believe you were being abused, when all this time, you were secretly his whore? And you enjoyed some of it? Get out. Out of my office._

Okay. So maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but there’s a real fear deep, deep inside it all. You don’t want her to see you any differently, even if she keeps it to herself.

You don’t want anyone to see the Real You, dramatic emphasis with the capital letters and all. You’re sure that if they knew, they’d look at you, really look at you, scrutinize you, even if it’s just to themselves. They’d see your habits, the door locking, the avoidance, the fear, in a new light.

It disgusts you. This part of yourself disgusts you. How can you even begin to talk about something you can barely even admit to yourself?

D finishes up his frankly disgusting looking breakfast and you do your best to finish the rest of your bagel, unwilling to waste precious food. 

In the past, you’ve had to do some pretty desperate things to get your food. Now that you’re able to just go and get it without any conditions attached to it, you don’t want to take advantage of this full feeling ever, ever again. 

The walk to D’s car is a lot more foreboding than it has any right to be. In a way, it feels like you’re leaving the apartment as one person: the victim, the innocent party. You can’t help but feel that when you come back after incriminating yourself to Courtney, you’ll be an accomplice, a complacent. No longer the child who did nothing wrong, but the slut who got what he deserved for wanting what he did. 

It’s complicated. And doesn’t make total sense, even to yourself. 

But that doesn’t stop the panic from slamming into you with every cursory thought that strays even tangentially to that dreaded part of your past. 

You owe it to Karkat. You owe it to Karkat. You owe it to Karkat.

It’s the only thing keeping you going. 

He deserves a Dave that’s better than the one he has now. At the very least, you’ll try to do right by him.

You owe it to Karkat.

-

You may owe it to him, but fuck if it doesn’t make you want to sink into the floor as you walk into Courtney’s suite. You don’t even have time to pull yourself together in her waiting room, because she isn’t seeing anyone and her door is wide open, so the moment she sees you, she beckons you in.

You can’t do this. 

You sit down across from her and try to look as put-together as you can manage. Courtney’s well-versed in sensing your bullshit from miles away, so she gives you a moment to collect yourself, then asks: “So, how have you been doing the past week?”

It’s as if you’ve suddenly forgotten how to speak English. You’ve been fucking terrible. But how do you say that? Being candid, even now, is difficult. _You_ don’t like being difficult. So you give it a moment and pretend to think about the question.

“It’s had its ups and downs. Pretty typical.” 

Courtney gives a thoughtful hum, and you have to look away in order to get the words out. She’s being silent because she can tell you have more to say. And boy. You do. “Actually. There’s something new I wanted to talk about today.”

“Alright, what did you want to talk about?”

“I wouldn’t even bring it up if it weren’t hurting my relationship with Karkat.” You blurt, as if that can adequately explain just how hard this is for you to talk about. 

As if it can come even close to explaining how much anxiety this is giving you, how much you don’t want to be doing this. 

“Let me ask you this, though. Does it affect you outside of your relationship with him?” 

Ah. She’s got you. You know where she’s going with this. You nod and pick at your fingernails. 

“So why do you think Karkat’s the deciding factor in whether or not you think it’s justified to seek help for it?”

You squirm in your seat, uncomfortable and vulnerable and seen in ways you don’t think you’ll ever be used to. “I’m different. I know we’ve been over how that’s total bullshit probably a few hundred times by now, but. Yeah. It’s different when I pull other people into my problems. And this is something that’ll change everything.”

“I know we’ve talked a lot before about boundaries, and about how you often put yourself in a selfless, giving role for others, as if you have no needs of your own.” Courtney crosses her legs and fixes you with a _look_ you know you can’t meet. “Do you think this might be a reflection of that? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t help but sense that you’re coming from the Dave that only wants to fix himself to make sure he isn’t a bigger inconvenience than he already perceives himself to be. Not from the Dave that deserves to heal, feel secure, and be nourished by those around him.” 

“I-“ your voice dies in your throat, so you clear it to cover up the pathetic waver. “Yeah. But. This is bigger. This is _really_ something I can’t inconvenience people with. It’s like-“

And there goes your voice again.

You start picking at the skin on your hands, start shutting down again, and it all comes spewing out once you’ve blocked your own emotions out of the picture. “It’s not like I can just be all ‘hey, remember how Bro beat me? You know what else he did? Sleep with me! But hey, guess what, sometimes I liked it!’” 

Your eyes quickly flicker to Courtney to judge her expression. She doesn’t seem disgusted, but you can’t be sure, and your mouth is still fucking going at it. She might be disgusted soon enough. You’re starting to sound angry, and it makes you even angrier that you can’t keep yourself under wraps enough to hide it. What good is the “shut-down” if it doesn’t even do the full fucking job?

“I can’t even think about it without wanting to crawl out of my skin. So when Karkat treats me all nice and calls me good and all that, I feel like a fucking fraud. Like, what would he think of me if he knew? If he knew that I might as well just be a- a whore, with all that I’ve done.”

Courtney’s expression bleeds compassion, so much so that you have to look away, put a buffer between yourself and the kindness you know you don’t deserve. It still doesn’t stop your heart from feeling like it’s being squeezed right out of your chest. 

“First of all, I’m sorry that happened to you, Dave. You’ve obviously been feeling really alienated because of these experiences, so thank you for opening up about them.” As she speaks, your shoulders begin to relax, a sort of hollowness settling inside of you at your own admissions. You can’t take any of it back, and now you’ll have to deal with it. “I also understand why you’d feel like this could be inconveniencing for your boyfriend and those around you.”

“Yeah like. It’s fucked up to just spring that up on people. Right.” You’re practically begging her to tell you that you’re better off internalizing this. Of course, she doesn’t take the bait.

“Maybe to strangers, yes. Typically, it’s frowned upon to air out abuse with people you don’t know. But don’t you think you’d want to know if someone close to you was suffering in silence? If they were taking responsibility for an adult who should’ve done better by them in the first place? Do you think you’d blame someone for seeking love and affection when they couldn’t get it any other way?”

“But I.” You beg your voice to stay steady. Instead, you sound like a little kid and you _know_ it. You hate it. You hate how childish you feel, like you’re floating back in time, like you’re twelve again, and you’re on your knees looking up, shaking apart, with that looming shadow holding some affection in front of you like a carrot on a string. You take the bait; you always take the bait. Like some fucking idiot, thinking Bro could ever give you love the way you’d always craved it. “Sometimes I liked it. Shouldn’t I be ashamed? Is it. Is it even r-rape if I started it?”

Courtney looks at you, a sad smile on her face. 

 

“You did what you had to do to survive.”

-

By the time your session is over, you’re ready to hibernate for the next few years. At the very least, you’re glad you didn’t cry. Sure, you’ve never once cried in therapy, but you’d like to keep it that way. It’s a weird flex, but it’s one of the only things you’ve got going for you at this point. 

(Your inner Courtney gently reminds you that it’s okay to have emotions that may be “inconvenient” for others. It wouldn’t make her job harder if you experienced an iota of emotion in front of her. But this is hard to believe, so the thought passes without much internalization.)

D is parked in front of the building when you get outside. And he picked up some Taco Bell on the way like the saint he is. 

Fucking score.

“How was the appointment?”

You lock it up in your chest. The fear, the self-hatred, the deeply suppressed anger that you hate to admit you even _have_ —

“It was good.”

D nods, accepts that you obviously want to be left alone, and turns up the radio. You drive back in total silence.

-

That night, when D is alone in the living room, you watch him through the crack in your door and will yourself to just _go out there already_. Even though you don’t feel ready, you don’t think you’ll ever feel ready. You force your useless legs to carry you out of your room.

You sit next to D on the couch and play with the front of your shirt. The TV is playing some stupid comedy, and D turns the volume down once he notices that you’re there. That you obviously have something you need to tell him.

Might as well rip the band-aid off. 

“Bro did more than just hit me,” you say, so quietly that you’re afraid he won’t be able to hear you. That you’ll have to repeat yourself. You’re so afraid of his reaction. You’re afraid of being more than he ever agreed to handle.

But when he looks at you without his shades on, it's as if his entire body sinks and deflates straight into the couch. Seconds tick by in complete silence as he puts together what you mean, what you _really_ mean, and his eyes are suddenly filling with tears. His mouth opens in shock, his skin goes ghostly white. You realize that he feels… Bad about it? Not disgusted. And you—

D doesn’t reach out for you, but he twitches like he wants to as the first tears drip down his face. “Oh God. Dave.”

Suddenly, you feel like scum for a completely different reason. You did this. You made him upset, and you can never take back the burden of this knowledge. He’ll have to live with it forever, he’ll have to know his brother raped you for the rest of his life. The remorse slams into you. “Fuck, I’m sorry D. I shouldn’t have—” 

You stand up, ready to make a hasty retreat, ready to run away from the mess you’ve made of the only good parental relationship you’ve ever had, but D grabs onto your sleeve (gently. So gently. He’s afraid to scare you. You did this). 

“Why would you be sorry? Dave, _I’m_ sorry. You’ve kept this to yourself all this time? Fuck. Dave. Kid.” His voice is wet, his expression torn. “ _Dave._ ”

You feel something tugging at you. For all of your childhood, you wished that Bro would acknowledge your pain upfront, comfort you, hold you… The rescue fantasy in your brain could have never played out like that, but you sought out that comfort anyway. It didn’t stop you from dreaming of the day he’d become the man you’d always wished he’d be for you. 

But now, you have a guardian who’s making it perfectly clear that he’s the adult, that you’re technically his kid. He isn’t blurring those lines or using you as some sick vessel for his own needs. His expression pleads you to recognize that the responsibility to pick yourself back up again isn’t all yours alone for once. 

You open your mouth uselessly, searching for some way to thank him for feeling that you deserve this love, to apologize for making him cry, and end up slotting yourself into his arms instead. D, with the permission to touch you, rubs your back and keeps you close, holds you like you’ll disappear, or like he can go back in time and fix everything himself. 

“I’m so sorry. Fuck, if he weren’t dead, I’d kill him again myself. Dave, _Dave_.” You feel a wet spot growing on your shoulder from where his face is resting on you. 

“It’s okay,” you whisper, voice thick, even though it isn’t okay.

It really isn’t.

And it never has been, has it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if u like it feel free to comment akjdskjf Im just a lowly writer man who thrives on feedback


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for some reason the pesterlog did NOT want to work with me as far as formatting goes /: w/e
> 
> this fic is just a gross amalgamation of a bunch of shit im working thru so im sorry if it seems rambly and sort of plotless at some points (itll get somewhere i swear)

The next two weeks might as well cease to exist completely. You spend them hunched over your turntables as you crank out song after song after song in the most creatively productive period of your life. 

If you’re not counting when you lived with Bro, at least. Back then, the only thing you _did_ was make stuff. Comics, music, memes. Obviously, it was your favorite mode of escapism, and it did the trick most of the time in distracting you from what was going on around you.

By and by, you only really get like this when shit is thoroughly fucked. When you’re so mentally scrambled that you might as well be in a vegetative state. 

But damn, if your trauma doesn’t make you one creative motherfucker. You don’t think you’ve ever created so many bangers. Consecutively, no less. You’re possessed by some desperate need to churn this shit out, you guess. 

Your life becomes a blur of “wake up, eat, hole yourself up in your room, make half-assed attempts to connect with your loved ones, take a nap, eat, then sleep.” Sometimes you go to therapy. And sometimes, you don’t even bother pretending you’ve got your shit together. On those days, you don’t bother trying to talk to your friends or family. 

Instead, you nap straight through your own inner critic’s smack-talk. Oh, you’re failing everyone by slipping again. Is that so? Well take this, brain, you can sleep it off. Or make more music until you can’t even think in anything other than music notes.

Inner critic? Never heard of her! Oh look, it’s time for another nap, because it’s the closest thing to death that you can get right now, and that’ll have to do.

You are getting kind of sick of this self-hatred thing, though. Back when you lived with Bro, you hated yourself, but you didn’t feel any of that crap _this_ strongly. If anything, it was an afterthought, a “oh yeah, I suck I guess” and nothing more pervasive. Arguably, you were the _most_ put-together you’ve ever been. 

At least then, you got things done. Sure, you were hardly there, hardly present, but at least there were bigger concerns than your stupid self-hatred. 

You had more to deal with in those days, so you hardly had time to focus on your mental health, or lack thereof. 

But now, Bro is gone, and you can’t help but find something to obsess over. Straight up, you’re not used to the security. Instead of having Bro to deal with, you’re preoccupied by the shame. The melodramatic itch to self-flagellate, like you’re Dirk or something. 

D is obviously getting more and more worried about you. Karkat too. So is everybody else, but for some reason, D and Karkat are the people that really make it hard for you to disappear completely. 

D, because he is everything you always wanted when you were growing up, and you can’t stand the fact that you’re squandering his efforts. Karkat, because he’s probably finding some way to blame himself for your own screwups, and that makes you blame _yourself_ even more.

It’s all very circular and, if you’re honest with yourself, really tiring. You’re doing mental gymnastics here, running yourself fucking ragged, and for what? It’s exhausting being like this, constantly clinging to what’s wrong instead of what’s right. So why are you acting like this?

Why is everything coming up _now_?

You’re cozied up under your blankets for your third nap of the day when you find yourself unable to fall back asleep. 

Typically, you have a good hefty chunk of shit going on in your mind, and it demands attention before you’re able to slip into unconsciousness. 

You start by thinking about Bro. About all your long-exhausted hang-ups you have concerning him. The hang-ups you’ve mentally examined from every possible angle, every possible perspective. The more you think about everything, the less sense it seems to make. Why’d he do that shit? Why are you like this? What the fuck is your deal, anyway? When did everything get so twisted up and irrevocably fucked? 

While you’re staring up at your ceiling, you start to feel—

Kind of torn up for some reason.

It’s this weird heaviness that starts to pull your heart straight into the earth. 

Huh. 

Your phone buzzes in your hand, and you check the notification with an unhealthy amount of disinterest. Is it too late for another nap? 

There are a lot of messages before the new ones, but you opt out of reading them and scroll to the newest ones.

CG: PLEASE, DAVE. I KNOW YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO PULL YOURSELF UP BY YOUR BOOTSTRAPS, OR HANDLE THIS ON YOUR OWN, OR WHATEVER. STUPID HUMAN INDIVIDUALISM CRAP YOU PROBABLY USE TO JUSTIFY ISOLATING YOURSELF, OR WHATEVER.  


CG: BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO.  


CG: I’M FUCKING WORRIED, OKAY?  


CG: I KNOW YOU DON’T LIKE TO HEAR THAT, EITHER.  


CG: I KNOW HAVING SOMEONE BE WORRIED ABOUT YOU IS LIKE YOUR EQUIVALENT TO SOME FORM OF GRAVE BETRAYAL. BECAUSE IT IMPLIES I DON’T THINK YOU’RE CAPABLE OF DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF. EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE WAY PAST HAVING TO PROVE SHIT TO ANYONE AT THIS POINT.  


CG: AND TRUST ME, AS SOMEONE WHO HATES HIMSELF. WELL.  


CG: I KNOW YOU’RE PROBABLY THINKING A LOT OF UNKIND THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF. YOU'VE PROBABLY GOTTEN SOME REALLY STUPID IDEAS INTO YOUR HEAD ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE "SUPPOSED" TO BE DOING OR WHAT YOU "SHOULD" BE ABLE TO HANDLE.  


CG: THINGS I’D DEBUNK *EASILY* IF YOU’D TALK TO ME, OR LET ME SEE YOU INSTEAD OF JUST ISOLATING YOURSELF. TO STEW IN YOUR THINK PAN VOMIT.  


CG: I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW. IF IT WERE UP TO YOU, I KNOW YOU’D PREFER FOR ME TO JUST, I DON’T KNOW. STAY AWAY AND LET YOU HANDLE IT.  


CG: BUT  


TG: hey  


CG: DAVE! HOLY FUCK.  


CG: DAVE.  


TG: hey karkat  


CG: I’VE MISSED YOU.  


CG: I TRIED BREAKING INTO YOUR APARTMENT BUT I COULDN’T GET DIRK TO LET ME IN. KIND OF THWARTED MY WHOLE “BUST IN AND PULL YOU OUT OF YOUR HOLE” IDEA. HE SAID TO LET YOU HAVE SOME SPACE, SO I DID? BUT. I DON’T KNOW.  


TG: nah probably wouldve made things worse if were being honest  


TG: but look  


TG: im sorry  


TG: ive missed you too  


TG: i dont know whats been wrong with me lately  


TG: i was doing like. good  


TG: or at least i was functioning and slowly functioning more and more  


TG: and i dont know what happened i just fucking flew straight off the deep end or  


TG: yeah it was shitty though  


TG: ive been shitty to you  


CG: HOLD UP. BEFORE YOU START SPIRALING. AND DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO TELL ME THAT YOU'RE NOT BECAUSE I CAN TELL.  


CG: YOU “DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG” WITH YOU?  


CG: YOU WERE TRAUMATIZED. FOR A VERY LONG TIME. YOU DON’T JUST GET OVER THAT, NO ONE JUST GETS OVER THAT!!!  


CG: AND RELAPSES HAPPEN. YOU *KNOW* THAT. EVEN IF YOU WERE DOING GOOD, IT’S NOT LIKE THAT MEANS THINGS CAN’T GET BAD AGAIN. AND WHO KNOWS, MAYBE, AND THIS IS JUST A ZANY SUGGESTION: THEY WEREN’T ALL THAT GREAT IN THE FIRST PLACE…?  


CG: MAYBE I’M BEING AN INSENSITIVE DOUCHEBAG BUT I KNOW THAT SOMETIMES I THINK I’M DOING GOOD UNTIL I SPIRAL AND FUCK EVERYTHING UP. THEN IT BECOMES PAINFULLY OBVIOUS THAT I WAS NEVER “GOOD” OR “FUNCTIONAL” IN THE FIRST PLACE.  


CG: I HAD JUST SHOVED IT ALL DOWN FAR ENOUGH TO WHERE I WOULND’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT.  


CG: AND THAT ISN’T HEALING DAVE. THAT’S TRYING TO FORGET, AND THAT SORT OF STUFF ENDS UP COMING RIGHT BACK UP SOONER OR LATER.  


TG: yeah yeah rose tells me that all the time, the whole trying to immediately get better vs actually sitting with my feelings bs  


TG: no offense but id rather have someone shoot me in the foot than sit with the feelings ive got right now  


TG: they kinda fuckin suck  


TG: id rather suppress it until im ready to poke around in there  


TG: shits nebulous and dark and expanding like spacetime itself and i dont have an einstein brain i can just plug into my dumbass head to make sense of it all 

TG: and plus there are uh  


\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is now an idle chum! --  


CG: DAVE?  


CG: YOU HAVEN’T RESPONDED IN LIKE AN HOUR.  


CG: LOOK, YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME IF YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE. I JUST MISS YOU. IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT MEANINGLESS HUMAN SHIT LIKE GOLF OR ULTIMATE FRISBY OR WHATEVER I'D EVEN TAKE THAT OVER SILENCE RIGHT NOW.  


CG: COME BACK?  


TG: yeah sorry  


TG: theres more you dont know about  


TG: and that shit right there is part of why i feel so guilty about this all  


TG: you say its fine to flip my shit every once and a while as sometimes shit just needs to be flipped no doubt bout that  


TG: but i cant help but feel like this is all sort of...  


TG: unhealthy dude  


CG: WHAT? OUR… RELATIONSHIP?  


TG: yeah, or at least this dynamic weve got goin rn  


TG: i feel bad even saying that because i obviously care about you  


TG: but im in a bad place  


TG: and idk how long its going to take me to claw myself out of it  


TG: i can see you typing and youre probably trying to apologize or  


TG: something but  


TG: look  


TG: i dont want to break up with you youre super important to me and all that fun sappy gay stuff  


TG: but the guilt of not being there for you isnt doing me any favors rn and nothing you can say will make me feel justified for doing this to you  


TG: so were not breaking up but also like  


TG: idk  


TG: fuck i dont even know where im going with this im sorry  


CG: NO. I GET YOU. SORRY, I JUMPED THE GUN THERE. YOU WAN’T TO “NOT BREAK UP” BUT STOP SEEING EACH OTHER FOR A LITTLE BIT? JUST SO YOU DON’T FEEL PRESSURED TO DO MORE WHILE YOU’RE GETTING BETTER?  


TG: hah well when you put it like that i cant help but think that you keep getting the short end of the relationship stick  


TG: always having to make accommodations for me when youre already dealing with your own shit  


TG: at this point your end of the relationship stick is shorter than even your nubby little horns my fine guy 

TG: shits tragic 

TG: but yeah karkat im so sorry  


TG: i really am  


TG: you deserve better and im going to get better so your boyfriend can actually give you the attention you deserve ok  


CG: DAVE FOR FUCKS SAKE, YOU WENT THROUGH A LOT. YOU STILL *ARE* GOING THROUGH A LOT.  


CG: MAYBE YOU ALREADY DO A LOT FOR ME, EVER THINK ABOUT THAT??? EVER THINK ABOUT HOW YOU MAKE ACCOMMODATIONS FOR ME????? HOW YOU LITERALLY BEND OVER BACKWARDS TO TRY AND MAKE ME FEEL SPECIAL EVEN IF YOU'RE BEING A GIANT INSUFFERABLE ASSWAD ABOUT IT?  


CG: SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY THAT YOU CAN’T SEEM TO GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL THAT YOU’RE SPECIAL, I’M WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE SPECIAL, I’M FINE WAITING AND MAYBE BEING A LITTLE LONELY FOR A WHILE BECAUSE. YOU. ARE. WORTH. THAT. WAIT.  


CG: OKAY???  


TG: ugh fine you win  


TG: it was good to talk to you  


TG: but its high time for my five pm nap and im on a tight schedule  


TG: the sandmanll have my ass if i keep him waiting  


TG: and not in the sexy way  


CG: HAR HAR. OKAY GO TAKE YOUR DEPRESSION NAP, LOSER. I’M HERE IF YOU NEED ME, AS ALWAYS. AND FOR FUCKS SAKE, DRINK SOME WATER. I KNOW YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T IN A FEW DAYS.  


TG: shit  


TG: yeah ill take care of myself  


TG: … thanks karkat  


TG: for everything  


TG: talk to you soon  


CG: <3  


TG: <3

You set your phone down and pull your comforter over your face. That heaviness still hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s gotten worse. Like you’re suddenly twenty times your real weight. Like you’ll sink straight into the ground if you’re not careful. 

A knock at your door breaks you from your thoughts, and you toss your comforter back down and call for the person to come in.

It’s D, unsurprisingly. He looks ragged. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced than they usually are, and you’ve heard the coffee machine go off multiple times throughout the day, so you know he’s had more than two entire pots by himself alone.

He’s probably tired because he’s been dealing with you and Dirk, he probably hasn’t been taking care of himself lately, and you went off the deep-end and _stayed_ there, chilling out at the bottom of the metaphorical pool like you had enough air to last you a few lifetimes. 

The guilt is back, pushing behind your eyelids, and you carefully hide that shit away. For now. Until you can deal with it alone.

“Hey, D.”

“Hey kid, brought you some fruit and water and shit, because you know, health, we love that in this household.” He sets the plate on the nightstand, and the heaviness gets worse. What the fuck is happening to you? You’re losing it.

“Oh, thanks man.”

You keep your voice level. You’ve got everything on-fucking-lock, except you don’t, and you’re not fooling anyone. Not even yourself. Not anymore. 

D stays standing at your bedside for a few more moments before he wordlessly walks to the door. Ever since you told him about the… Other stuff Bro did, he’s been quieter. It’s exactly why you didn’t tell him in the first place, and you still don’t know why you did. It just. Slipped out.

And now you’re paying for it. D gives you your space, doesn’t know what to do with you other than feed you and get you to therapy. 

You know you can go to him for anything you need, though. You just… Don’t know what you need in the first place.

Like when you told him about the sex shit, your mouth opens without your volition. “Hey wait. D.”

He stops, his back to you in the doorway. Seemingly startled, he turns a bit to look at you and waits for what you have to say.

“I.” What _were_ you going to stay? What can you possibly say that’ll accurately explain your mental state as of late? You can’t. You can’t put into words what you don’t understand yourself. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s up with me. Thanks though. For being here and shit. It’s more than he ever did, so don’t beat yourself up about it too much.”

D quirks a little smile, and it puts you at ease a bit to see. “I’ll keep being here. Even if you don’t know what’s up, we’ll figure it out together, right?”

He doesn’t comment on what you said about not wanting him to blame himself. But that’s to be expected. Being a Strider (excluding the B word, he doesn’t count) kind of means that you have to blame yourself for every little thing that happens, ever. You know that saying it’s not his fault won’t help him actually believe it, but you have to put it out there.

Because how was he supposed to know? You never wanted _anyone_ to know. Ever.

After your cute little familial exchange, D leaves you to your own devices again. You drink the water, feeling reborn (hydrated. damn, water is fucking amazing). But the moment you pick up the plate of fruit, something inside of you pauses. Falters. Cracks. 

The heaviness doubles back down. You nearly wheeze at the pressure, until you notice that you’re. 

Oh. You’re crying.

It’s quiet, because that’s how you’ve learned to experience your emotions: quietly. But the tears still won’t stop coming. It’s an overflow. A flood of biblical proportions right on your face. 

Fuck. 

Getting a plate of fruit from your guardian shouldn’t make you bawl your eyes out like this, but it does. And for the next half-hour, you cease functioning completely, face in your hands as you cry properly for the first time in what feels like forever. 

Karkat’s understanding.

D’s gentleness and unbridled care. 

Can someone like you ever really deserve this kind of love? Your breathing gets more and more labored as snot clogs your nose. You’d blow it, but then it’d make noise. You’d be making noise. And even after all this time, you can only cry in private, in bed, in the dark, so silently that you hold your breath whenever you can feel yourself about to whimper, too afraid of having anyone see you like this. 

Eventually, you cry yourself to exhaustion, giving yourself a pretty nasty headache in the process. You decide to try for that nap again. 

You don’t know what’ll come next, or where you’ll go from here. You don’t know when you’ll feel okay again, or if you ever will, but you know that people love you. They see some worth in you, somehow. 

It does something to you, something you can’t put into words. It’s yet another feeling that you were never given enough emotional know-how to pin down yourself. It sits helplessly inside of you, begging to be explained. 

While you figure it all out though, you know that at the very least, you have some people who want you here. Who will gladly help you every step of the way, even if you’re objectively burdening them with that weight. 

You start crying again, unable to discern if it makes you feel relieved or extremely pressured. 

Relief: finally being safe. Being treasured. Being looked after, cared for, _loved_.

Pressure: not being good enough. Waiting for them to all realize that you’re not as innocent as they think you are.

But D doesn’t blame you for it. Courtney doesn’t hate you, or think of you as some wicked seducer. They may pity you, and that may sting, but they don’t resent you. Still, the fear that they will find out “Who You Really Are” persists. 

Relief. Pressure.

Jade messages you on Pesterchum, and you surprise yourself by how willing you are to actually respond for once. 

You decide to answer after you get some sleep. For some reason, you’re strangely hopeful that things are starting to turn around for you. 

You try not to freak out about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading ! consider commenting pls im just a little creacher and i thrive on feedback


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow this was longer than i meant it to be! ty all for your comments, im really enjoying writing this & it's been pretty helpful in working through my own stuff
> 
> here we go again

…You fail to not freak out about it. When have you _ever_ been known to stay chill about literally anything? 

That strange, hopeful glow you felt after D came into your room leaves you semi-nauseated and fully convinced that you’re walking into a trap of some sorts. Even if you have no clue as to what it might be. Even if that’s totally unrealistic and you know, deep down, that you’re safe. 

Despite everyone’s relentless and unconditional support (or maybe because of it) you can’t seem to get a grip.

At the very least, you’re starting to leave your room for more than a few minutes at a time. And that’s a start.

But when Dirk catches you sneaking around in the dark kitchen at two in the morning, rummaging through the pantry as if all the food’ll disappear if you’re not quick enough, that shame resurfaces, reminding you that even when you’re able to function, some of these habits never truly go away. 

He flicks the light on, and you slam the pantry door shut in a rush of dizzying fear at the prospect of getting caught, of being seen like this.

But in a typical Dirk fashion, he passes you by without commenting on how fucking freaky you’re being. He simply reaches for the coffee pot and pours himself another cup.

Your heartrate finally starts to settle once your body catches up with your brain, realizing that there’s a 0% chance he’s going to wail on you.

“Dude. It’s way past midnight, is coffee really the move right now?”

Dirk barely glances your way, but you know it’s his way of giving you space when you… Act like this. He gets that, in a way, your biggest fear is being truly seen. Usually, it’s just your inner self that you don’t want people getting a glimpse at. But during times like these, even having people look at your physical body can make you lose it as you imagine how obvious your twitchy, traitorous body can be. 

He doesn’t look at you, letting you keep the meager scraps of your dignity, and you can’t thank him enough for that sometimes.

Dirk looks right into his coffee and groans. “I have a lot of shit to do. It’s so the move.”

“You always have a lot of shit to do, dude. Can’t the shit wait for you to get some sleep first? You need commission limits or something, this is killing you.”

“Yeah well, you know how it is. I could say the same thing to you.” 

What he means: _you’re also doing a pretty shitty job of taking care of yourself._

He’s got you there. “I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite.”

Dirk yawns with his mouth shut, somehow, and shuffles his way back to his room. “Yeah, yeah, Mom Strider. See you tomorrow maybe. If I’m done with this stupid robot by then.”

He leaves you in the kitchen, and you tentatively open the pantry back up. Now that the light is on, you kind of feel ridiculous for digging around like you haven’t had any food in days. You grab a few snacks, but slowly this time, because you don’t have to act like a feral animal anymore.

You grab a few extra to keep in your closet (because your stash is getting low) and get the fuck back to your room.

The next day, you even leave your room to sit by D on the couch. Even though you still feel really weird and kind of uncomfortable that he knows what he knows, you think that it’ll probably be okay. If you don’t think about it for more than 2 seconds.

And it is. 

When you manage to block the idea of him knowing out of your mind. 

You guys watch a shitty movie and rip on it the entire time, and things are strangely alright. Very strangely.

The next day, you leave the house with Dirk to get groceries. He drops an entire carton of juice in the aisle, it explodes, and even that ends up alright. 

The next next day, you only take _one_ nap, and you even remember to message Karkat. Another weirdly ok thing that doesn’t send you spiraling back to your meltdown hole. 

Yet, recounting these objectively fine days doesn’t make you feel as better as you think it should. It feels like you’re just reading off a laundry list. Like those okay days didn’t actually happen to you, but to someone else. You’re on the outside looking in, hardly living your own life in the way it’s meant to be lived.

It’s such a sharp contrast to how poorly you were doing before, you guess. It’s jarring to suddenly realize that yes, the world is still existing just as it always has, right on the outskirts of your huge meltdowns, just waiting for you to come back on out and experience it. 

Is it disconcerting to know that the world keeps on existing, even when you don’t? Even when you hide yourself away from it and pretend it doesn’t exist? The present is right there, right outside your door, right outside your shut window. So why do you hide in the past, in memories that keep you stagnant?

You’ll think about it. 

In the meantime, you should probably focus on not slipping back into that fucking meltdown hole. And maybe, you should catch up on that schoolwork you’ve been neglecting.

Ah, meltdowns and their wily ways. How you have missed being a total disaster.

Speaking of the wily and their ways, Rose is messaging you.

TT: I heard from Jade that you’ve finally reemerged from hibernation. 

TT: Good morning, sleeping beauty. Did you have sweet dreams? 

TG: oh god the jokes theyre so funny haha im fucking dying how can you stand being so funny rose oh god oh fuck ha ha 

TT: Your sarcasm is deliciously sharp today. 

TT: …That being said, I’m glad you seem to be on the upswing. 

TG: yeah thanks i guess 

TG: everyones been saying that to me and all but i kind of wish wed all just stop acknowledging how bad i was/am doing 

TG: that sound good? 

TG: can we all just collectively repress the past few years 

TG: kind of makes it hard to forget how much of a dumpster fire i am on the best of days 

TG: and how obvious it apparently is for everyone who so much as delicately blinks in my direction to tell that im a dumpster fire 

TT: Dave, concern is but another nonverbal language animals use to show they care about each other. It reflects nothing about you other than the fact that you have people who would willingly kill to protect you. 

TT: I think that’s quite nice, all things considered. 

TG: too bad i don’t have anyone that need killing 

TG: that ship has sailed 

TG: but the sentiment is appreciated i guess 

TG: anyway hows school hows your spicy goth gf 

TT: It’s going well. I must say that I miss home, though. 

TT: California just isn’t the same as New York. Obviously, it is almost 3,000 miles away after all. And my course load is heavy, but I’m enjoying it. 

TT: Except my Norse Mythology class. I can’t forgive myself for willingly putting myself in a room with so many misogynists. 

TT: And Kanaya is wonderful. I’m thinking of inviting her back to New York for break since she doesn’t have any family on Earth. 

TG: thats cute are you guys gonna knit each other hanukkah sweaters 

TT: Oh yes. The shittiest of Hanukkah sweaters. 

TT: And don’t think you’re getting out of a joint Hanukkah this year. We still haven’t managed to pull it all together yet, but Mom and Roxy are trying to lure D in. And they’ll succeed, they have their ways. 

TG: lol thatll be a fucking disaster 

TG: and d really isnt all that hard to pull into shenanigans he kind of just goes with whatever 

TG: so looking forward to it 

TG: hanukkah is like months away though couldnt this wait until like near thanksgiving or something 

TT: These things take many months of preparation, Dave. Obviously, you’ve never had the displeasure of experiencing a full-scale Lalonde Party. 

TT: I’ll forgive you for your blatant ignorance this time around. 

TG: thanks you truly are a paragon of magnality 

TG: where would i be without your endless forgiveness and guidance? 

TT: Dead, surely. 

TG: ha 

TG: hey look sorry i gotta go 

TG: super busy you know with my online classes ive ignored for the past few weeks 

TG: i have a grind to get back to 

TG: some pies to dip my baby soft fingers into 

TT: Of course. I’ll leave you to it. Make sure to not cross-contaminate, or the FDA will be on your ass. 

TT: It was good to hear from you 

TT: Bitch. 

TG: bitch 

TG: ill cross contaminate my pies as much as i like thank you very much 

TG: im a slippery one 

TG: theyll never catch me is what im sayin 

TG: but ttyl

You don’t think you realized how much you missed bantering with Rose until just now. How long has it been since you’ve done more than shrug her off?

You switch over to your online class browser and try to not get irritated. You did this to yourself, right? So now you have to catch up. It’ll probably take you all night, but you know logically that it’ll take some of the weight off when you’re finally done. 

It’s time to build back up to a semi-consistent schedule. After that, _then_ you can worry about why everything feels so off. 

You see Courtney again in a few days anyway. You’re sure she’ll see into your fucking soul and give you some answers like she always does. Until then, your own issues go on the backburner, and you spend the next ten hours diligently working on auto-pilot, desperate to at least do _something_ productive with yourself.

X

By the time you finish, it’s the next day. Nine in the morning, to be exact. You close out your tabs and switch to Pesterchum, and even though your eyes burn, you feel obligated to check up on the messages people left you. Some from John. From Jade… Rose again.

You also have some notifications from Karkat. Those, you open immediately.

CG: I SEE YOU’RE ON DO NOT DISTURB SO DON’T WORRY ABOUT ANSWERING RIGHT NOW, I JUST WANTED TO SEND AN INVITE YOUR WAY. 

CG: I KNOW IT’S LAME BUT WE’RE HAVING A MOVIE NIGHT THIS FRIDAY. ME, TEREZI, AND VRISKA. SO IT’LL BE PRETTY LOW-KEY AND ALL, BUT WE’RE PLANNING ON MARATHONING SOME OF TORIVA REESAM’S MOVIES. 

CG: UHH, WE’LL PROBABLY START AROUND 7PM AND I GUESS WE’LL END WHENEVER WE’RE SICK OF HOW SHITTY THEY ARE. 

CG: NO PRESSURE, I WON’T BE UPSET IF YOU CAN’T COME, BUT I’M INVITING YOU ANYWAY JUST IN CASE YOU’D WANT TO 

CG: OKAY I’M GOING TO STOP SPAMMING YOU, JUST LET ME KNOW 

CG: (:B 

TG: ok first of all you know those cute little horn emoticons make me lose my shit 

TG: how dare you sway me like this 

TG: but im not sure yet 

TG: i have a therapy appt friday morning and depending on how that goes i might be too exhausted to do anything else 

TG: but dont take that as a no ill just let you know on friday 

CG: COOL, SICK. 

CG: ALSO, TEREZI TOLD ME TO TELL YOU THAT SHE’S BRINGING JUMBO TAKI BAGS, IF THAT SWEETENS THE DEAL AT ALL 

TG: oh that absolutely sweetens the deal holy shit 

TG: i pulled an all nighter catching up with my online work so im pooped im gonna go crash 

TG: but ill talk to you later and ill let you know about the movie night whenever i know for sure 

CG: HOLY SHIT YOU DOUCHEBAG, GO SLEEP 

CG: DON’T MAKE ME COME AND TUCK YOU IN. I WILL DO IT, DON’T TEST ME!! 

TG: as tempting as the urge to test you is 

TG: because this lad loves a good tucksies before beddie bye time 

TG: but i guess ill go to sleep 

TG: you win this round you fiend

Before Karkat responds, you exit the chatlog and skim through what everyone else had to say to you. You’re kind of stuck on the whole movie night thing, since it’d be the most interaction you’ve had in, well, weeks. 

You’re kind of worried that you’ll flip out again or something. Or do something that’ll make Vriska and Terezi think you’re a total wackjob, since they don’t know about your past and how you get sometimes. 

Since they’re Karkat’s friends, you don’t want them to think you’re a bad boyfriend. But maybe they already think that, with how much you’ve been neglecting Karkat and all.

You miss the Dave that joked away every little problem he had. You miss the Dave that had jokes just oozing out of his ass, ready to be used against every little accusation, against every little hint that things may not be what he said they were.

You really miss being him. You miss how easy it used to be for you to shrug this shit off. To piss people off bad enough that they’d just give up and leave you alone.

Now, it’s all consuming, and you know everyone else can tell. It’s like once you took the cap off, it stopped fitting the bottle. And now you can’t stick that fucker back on, at most, you can jam it down a bit and hope nothing leaks out. 

Thankfully, you’re too tired to overthink it any more right now. Instead, you manage to send out a few replies to John before you find yourself unable to stay conscious. You’ll worry about all the ways it might go wrong when you wake up.

You should really just sleep. Think about it later. Now, you’re just stressing yourself out.

Yeah. Later. For now, you need to catch up on sleep and not think about _anything._

It’d be a nice change of pace. 

X

Sadly, the moment you wake up, your mind is back to obsessing. 

You go back to your turntables and even manage to draw a shitty comic (which you send to Jade, because she’s always enthusiastic about content you churn out. And that always makes you feel better somehow).

Though you hoped it’d help distract you, it does a piss-poor job of it, and you’re still obsessing over everything by the time you have your appointment with Courtney on Friday. Wonderful. The entire drive there, you try to sort through what’s even happening in your dumb brain. A lot. A lot is happening. 

Gee, at least she’ll be thrilled that you came in with something to work with. It’s going to be fun unloading onto her.

And unload you do. It’s like the moment you sit down, she barely has time to open her mouth and greet you before you’re blurting out everything, stoicism and denial thrown right out the window. 

“I don’t understand why I’m always so freaked out over nothing.” You say, far tenser than you want to be in front of her. “Things are fine and _I_ feel fine, yet it’s like I’m not actually the one experiencing my own fineness. Then it’s like, I’m mad at myself for not letting myself be okay, and I get even more anxious because there’s nothing WRONG, so—”

God. You have to force yourself to stop. Your stomach does flips and reminds you that you’re being a bit much right now. Tone it down, Dave. No one wants your anxious energy contaminating the whole fucking room. 

Courtney doesn’t seem angry with you for jumping right into things without asking her how her week has been, though, and that has to be a small win. Surely. 

“Well, were things ever stable for you when you were a kid? When things were ‘okay,’ and I’m using that word loosely here, did they ever stay okay for long?”

You don’t have to think about that one at all. “No.”

“What would happen?” 

“It’d be alright for a few days after a strife. I’d get comfortable, then do something stupid and get myself in trouble because I got too complacent.” You start to pick at your fingernails again, trying to keep yourself calm as you reach back in time, teasing those memories out. “Then ultimately, shit wouldn’t be alright anymore, because I’d go and do something that Bro didn’t like.”

“So if you were never allowed to get comfortable and settle into yourself, what makes you think that you’d suddenly be able to do that now? You were raised to believe that being comfortable is just another sign that you’re about to get hurt.”

“Or that the shoe’s about to drop.”

“Or the shoe’s about to drop,” she repeats back, gravely. “And when things are okay, how are you to be expected to actually experience it without reverting back to that mindset! What did I say to you a few weeks ago? _You did what you had to do to survive._ And you still are, even if that danger isn’t present anymore.”

You can’t help but sound a little irritated, knowing why you act the way you do doesn’t change the fact that you can’t get it all to fucking stop. “Well how can I get myself to stop reacting like that? Shit should be fine by now.”

“Why do you think you’re not able to stop reacting to things you feel you should be over by now?” The way she says it lets you know that she already knows the answer and is totally setting you up for a sicknasty lesson on how to not be such a self-flagellating Dirkhead. 

Why can’t you stop acting like this? You think about it for a moment, think about the kind of stuff Courtney tells you, and even though you don’t completely believe it, the act of saying it is worth something at the very least. You think. 

“Because… I’m not letting myself actually process what happened. I’m willing it to disappear as soon as possible without actually considering that this shit’s like, ingrained in my body.”

Your own voice sounds pained. You don’t like being this kind to yourself, this forgiving of how long this is taking you. It physically hurts to get the words out. “And the—the coping mechanisms won’t go away until I work through it for real. Instead of like, just telling myself I should be over it and move on when I’m obviously not ready to move on yet.”

“One-hundred percent.” She says, and by the way she’s smiling, you know you hit the therapy lesson nail right on the head. “The same goes for the sexual abuse you mentioned a few weeks back, too. I know you said before that you were having trouble working through it.”

You grimace. “Yeah. Not there yet. Not sure I’ll ever be ready to tackle that beast.”

“You may not want to hear it Dave, but you’d be surprised. When I first met you, you couldn’t even look me in the eyes.”

And yup, there goes your throat, closing up at the stark realization that she saw straight through you. Even though it’s her job, it doesn’t sting any less. 

“You were so locked up that it looked like it was painful for you to even vocalize any of your feelings. Yeah, you may not want to hear it, but you’ve really grown so much in these few years. You’ve accomplished a lot; probably more than you thought you’d ever be capable of.”

You shrug, but you know she’s right deep under your urge to deny any credit given to you. 

But the facts remain. You never thought you’d escape Bro. You thought you’d be his fucking punching bag ‘til the day you died. You never envisioned this for yourself, this family, friends, and boyfriend deal. You always thought it was somewhere beyond your reach, something you could never attain. Something you’d never deserve. 

So what’s to say you’ll never be able to get through the sexual abuse thing too?

“Fuck. That hurts my brain.”

Courtney laughs good-naturedly. “You’re a vibrant person, Dave. You’ve proven time and time again that you can come into every session with something you want to learn, something you want to better in yourself. Even when it makes you uncomfortable. Like now. I know you don’t like me complimenting you like this but—hey, I mean it.”

You squirm in your seat and look away from her. You don’t want your eyes to burn right now, but they do anyway, and you feel dangerously close to crying. “…Thanks. Means a lot.”

“We’ll get to everything else that happened when we’re ready for it, too. Not when you just want to ‘get over it’ right?”

“Yeah.” Licking your lips, you consider what Rose’s been telling you this entire goddamn time. You owe her an ‘I told you so,’ don’t you? “So how do I work on… Sitting more with my feelings?”

“Journal more. Talk to people you trust. Vocalize how you feel when you’re feeling it, don’t shove it away to deal with it later, when you’re alone. That just keeps the cycle of isolation going.”

“But ew, vulnerability.”

“Why ew? What about it makes you feel like ‘ew’ is an appropriate first response to it?”

“No one wants to hear my bullshit, maybe?” Whoa, that came out a bit more scathing than you intended it to be.

You watch your tone. “Bro sure as hell never wanted any feelings even remotely near him. I know that’s part of it, and since he taught me to deal with my problems on my own, it always seems like a bother. Especially if I can handle it by myself in the first place, why bother someone else about it?”

“Well, think of it like this. How do you feel when Karkat comes to you with a problem?”

You think about it for a moment. If you’re giving yourself some credit, you know you give a whole lotta fucks about how he does. You care about others more than Bro ever wanted you to, that’s for sure. “…Compassionate, I guess. I want him to feel better.”

“So how _does_ it make you feel when you manage to make him feel better?”

“Good? Like I’m doing something for him, I guess? Like I’m somehow offering him something he didn’t have before.”

“So why wouldn’t you want other people to feel like that? It’s the same thing, people feel compassion towards you and want to make you feel better. And more than that, it makes them feel better too. Isn’t that neat!”

You suddenly feel like you have a giant chasm in your chest. Like Courtney had a hole-punch pressed to your heart and just popped that sucker out.

“Huh.” Suddenly, the years of emotional isolation seem a little pointless when she says it like that. “I guess I never thought of it that way?”

“It’s hard to, because the tendency is to think of yourself as the exception to the rule. But why would you be? There’s nothing drastically different between you and the other billions of people on this earth, after all.”

You go silent, unable to fight that logic. Something in you screams, demands to be different, somehow more broken than everyone else on the planet. But is it true? Is it even possible to be so radically deviant from the norm?

Plenty of people are abused like you were. So why are you any different from them? Why do _you_ deserve less love? 

You guess, in a way, this is your brain’s drastic attempt to justify the pain you’ve put yourself in, now that you’re thinking retrospectively. 

If you’ve been deserving of love and care this entire time, what would it mean for you? It would mean that you’ve spent years hiding away, hurting yourself, fucking crucifying yourself just because an asshole with a stick up his ass told you that you were nothing.

You don’t know. You guess, looking back, it kind of makes you sad that you’ve resisted accepting love from the people around you. Was there ever a point in the first place? When did you decide that hating yourself was even remotely helpful?

God, you feel like you’ve wasted your entire life for a fucking lie. 

The session ends, and you wish Courtney a good week as she finishes charging your card for the co-pay. 

You’ve worked so hard to build this image of yourself, this image of yourself as some unworthy, twisted demon. And what do you have to show for it?

Has it ever done you any good?

It makes your chest hurt with some weird sympathy toward yourself. It’s not a feeling you’re used to, and you’re not sure how to deal with it. 

You kind of want it to stop.

You reach into your pocket and grab your phone, feeling an abrupt urge to fight against your own bullshit, even if you think you don’t deserve your current life, or anyone in it.

You’re going to give yourself something for once. 

-

TG: i think id like to come to the movie thing tonight actually 

TG: im feeling pretty good about it


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this a bit shorter! i just got my wisdom teeth out yesterday, so i'm writing this between my bouts of nausea from the pain medication they prescribed me lol

“Well, if it isn’t our favorite token human,” Vriska says the moment she sees you, slinging an arm around your neck. You laugh and shove her off as Terezi teases you from your other side. 

It’s been a while since you’ve hung out with Karkat and his friends—though, you guess they might also be _your_ friends…? How many times do you have to hang out with someone’s friends for them to become yours, too? 

You aren’t too sure. But you think that maybe, you’re starting to cross that line with them.

Karkat kisses you on the cheek as you all settle in for the movie, and it’s all surprisingly normal. You joke, you throw popcorn, you give everyone a hard time, and endlessly make fun of the movies you end up watching.

You’re feeling more like your old self, and it’s pretty great. Lately, you’ve had trouble figuring out just who your old “self” even was, but if there’s ever a Dave you’d like to be forever, this would be him: jokey, fun, and free of inconvenient hang-ups.

It isn’t realistic, but a man can dream of permanent stability. 

At some point, you fall asleep together, strewn about Karkat’s living room. It might be the most restful night you’ve had in weeks. Before, you could sleep for hours and hours and hours and still feel like you’d been up for days. 

But this is… nice. 

When you wake up, you’re still thinking about the stuff Courtney told you. About the supposed power of sharing your burdens with the people you care about. The more you think about it, the more it makes sense, and it bothers you that it makes as much sense as it does. 

You end up watching Karkat sleep for a little while. He always looks so peaceful like this, with his expression all smoothed out. It reminds you that even though Karkat’s a productive, mostly-solid guy, he still has a lot of weight on his shoulders. 

People have the tendency to unload everything on Karkat without keeping an eye out for how he’s really doing. Sometimes it’s easy to forget and become complacent, especially since his attitude towards himself is largely dismissive.

Yet, the difference between his sleeping face and his normal day-to-day is stark enough that you think about it. Then, you think about what Courtney said, too. 

Soon, Terezi wakes up, kicking Vriska to rouse her. The yelling starts, and Karkat groans, covering his face with a couch pillow.

“That’s what you get for inviting them over for the night, dude,” you say, because yeah, Terezi and Vriska are _terrible_ house guests, and that’s just an undeniable fact. The sky is blue, you’re gay, Vriska and Terezi are absolute disasters. 

“Yeah. Fucking serves me right for trying to be a good friend. My crimes must be so egregious, obviously I’d deserve none of this. I was having a nice dream, and now it’s ruined. Forever. I’ll never be able to salvage it.” 

“Oh boo hoo.” Vriska gets up, presumably to raid Karkat’s kitchen. “I don’t know _what_ you’d do without us, Karkat. It’d be a lonely, lonely life for you without us in it”

“Peaceful, you mean.” Karkat mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. You lean into him and play with the end of his long shirt. 

God, how they find the energy to bicker this early in the morning is beyond you.

“Hey!” Terezi sits up so quickly and dramatically that you flinch into Karkat. You’re glad she can’t see you, because that was _mad_ embarrassing. Terezi, ever the one for unnecessary flair, puts her hands on her hips and scoots on her butt towards you and Karkat. “I resent that! Take it back!”

“ _Make me_.”

“Yeah, make him.”

“Hey! Whose side are you even on?” Karkat whips around to look at you, all piss and vinegar, and you laugh. 

“Whosever side is more entertaining. Up top.” 

You and Terezi high-five. It’s amazing, and absolutely enrages Karkat. Within the next few seconds, Karkat and Terezi are practically wrestling on the floor, pulling and shoving at each other like a couple of children. You feel more satisfied than you have any right to be.

Vriska comes back in with some snacks and sits next to you on the couch, right where Karkat had been before he launched himself at Terezi. “How long have they been at it?”

“Maybe a minute or two.”

“Wow. What wrigglers.” Vriska says. “Imagine being _that_ petty.” 

It’s kind of amusing making fun of them with her. You’re starting to think that these two are your friends for real now. Otherwise, there wouldn’t really be a reason for Vriska to even joke with you in the first place. You don’t think anyone in the world can make Vriska do something that she doesn’t want to do. 

By the time Karkat and Terezi finally settle down, Vriska’s leaving for work, and Terezi ducks out soon after, having her own life to get back to. 

When you’re back to being alone with Karkat, you think it might be time to stop overthinking. A part of you still doesn’t believe that people would _want_ to make you feel better, or even feel good from doing it. 

Asking directly is probably a better option than marinating in your own self-deprecating fatalism. Probably.

“Hey, Karkat, can I ask you something?”

He glances over to you, answer instantaneous. “Yeah, what’s up?”

You suddenly feel like this is a really childish thing to ask, so you begin to fidget with the blanket you’re sitting next to. “How do you feel when I come to you with my problems?”

Karkat seems caught off guard by that, but he sidles closer to you and bumps his shoulder to yours, grumbling in that sickening, adorable way he does when he gets all tender, but doesn’t want to admit it. “Well, it’s a relief. Knowing you’re not keeping everything to yourself is nice, because I know how trapped up here you get.” 

He taps your temple. 

“Says you,” you say, trying for humor even though you feel completely wrung out. Conceptualizing this whole ‘people can feel good helping; it doesn’t have to be burdensome’ thing is… hard.

“Why’re you asking?”

“Courtney said something interesting to me yesterday,” you fidget with Karkat’s fingers, eyes locked away from his kind gaze. “It was basically like, she asked me about how I feel when you come to me with your problems, and I told her that it made me feel good, basically, that you’d trust me enough. And it got me thinking…”

Karkat beats you to it. “And you wonder how anyone can _really_ get anything out of helping your sorry ass, right? I mean,” there’s a pause. Karkat collects himself, the thinly veiled self-hatred melting as he calms down. “I mean, that’s how I think sometimes.”

“Dude, you’re like the best, kindest person I know. Even though you pretend you’re not, you’re always helping other people, like some sorta emotion vigilante. But you keep shit to yourself, and I’ve always kind of considered you opening up to me as like, a big deal. Getting close to someone like you is a straight up privilege, how would I get nothing out of it?”

You realize that you’re ranting a bit too late and stop, starting to feel your face heat up. Even though you’re exactly looking right at him at him, you feel Karkat look away from you, the bashful bastard. 

You punch him in the shoulder to make him (and yourself) feel less awkward about the frankly disgusting amount of vulnerability you just showed him. “You suck, you douchebag. Let me love you.”

Karkat laughs at that, and you count that as a win. 

You thought that would be the end of the conversation, but Karkat turns your way again and stills your fingers from fidgeting with his. “Dave.”

You look up, movement twitchy and nervous. He doesn’t say anything else, he doesn’t continue, but there’s some odd understanding between the two of you. 

At the end of the day, you’re both just emotionally constipated, self-sacrificing assholes. Occasionally, you somehow manage to drop the asshole act for each other. Why can’t you do it for yourselves?

It’s a weird moment of clarity. Sometimes, you’re shocked by how similar you and Karkat are. It reminds you, yet again, that he has a lot going on, even if he hides it away from the world, and from you. 

You kiss him and try not to feel guilty, pushing all thoughts of Bro from your mind as you try to show him your heart, if only for a second. He kisses back, hungry and desperate, but you break contact, worried that you’ll only get caught in the web of your unpleasant memories. 

Boundaries. Wow. Love those. 

Karkat thumps his forehead down to your shoulder. You loop your arms around him and try to breathe. 

You take some of your walls down. It’s a conscious effort, but you need him to know, with all the authenticity that you can muster, how you really feel about him. “You don’t have to do it all on your own either, y’know.” 

Karkat clutches you back. It’s sad how responsive he is to gentleness. 

For you, when you hear a compliment you can’t accept, it’s pretty easy for you to let it roll off of you. Like water off a duck’s back, or whatever. But for Karkat, it’s different. He’s never been able to just shrug it off like you do.

Instead, Karkat visibly fights with himself.

He draws inward, all tense and angry because he can’t consolidate it all, and you can tell how he won’t let himself _believe_ that he’s worth it in the way that his claws tighten in your shirt. 

Karkat takes a minute to break down into tears, but it’s not much of a surprise when he does. You get the impression that he’s been holding it back, all to himself, for far too long. 

You try not to beat yourself up for being so distant. It’s not something you can completely control, and Karkat knows this, so you know that he isn’t blaming you. It’s another thing that’s hard to accept but remains true all the same. 

But right now, while you’re okay, you can cradle your boyfriend in your arms. As he cries, you rub his back, doing all that you can to shelter him from the world and from himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments, i slurp them up


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im putting less pressure on myself to crank out 3k-5k chapters, so thank you all for sticking with me for this fic! it's probably the only multi chapter fic ive continued to update consistently in like... 5 years. the feedback helps keep me going, so double thank you for all the nice comments!
> 
> that being said: warning in this chapter for drug overdose mention, suicide ideation, vague sexual abuse, and bro being bro in general

You and Karkat stay like that for a while, embracing like it’s the last time you’ll ever see each other. It’s the closest you’ve been to another person in a while, so you soak in the comfort for all that it’s worth.

Once Karkat stops crying, you stay intertwined, still and quiet. You can feel his heartbeat up against yours, a calming reminder of what’s present and real. 

For a moment, you feel so relaxed that you consider telling him about the dreaded S E X thing, followed by the dreaded A word that you hate so much. You’re so close to spilling, but it catches in your throat, and you remain silent.

You’re not ready for that. You don’t even know how you feel about it, exactly. Don’t be impulsive with this, you remind yourself, it might feel good now, but you know it won’t feel good for long.

You’re just not ready to tell him. Don't rush it.

Karkat stays tucked up against you until you need to leave. D texts you to say that he’s out front, and you gently pull your boyfriend off of you. His horns bump your chin as he tries to burrow back into you, the cute little bastard. But you gotta bounce, and thems the breaks. 

“Karkat, D’s here.”

He breaks away from you slowly, his face puffy from crying. When he sniffs, your heart does a pathetic lurch in your chest. “Ugh. Tell him to go away.”

“Wish I could, babes,” he scrunches up his nose in disgust when you call him that. It never fails to amuse you. “But this bad bitch has to get back before D keels over from worrying too much.”

“He’s so needy.” Karkat gets off of you, and his presence is sorely missed against your body. He’s like a weighted blanket. A warm, heated, alien weighted blanket. “Guardians who care about you? Wow, gross.” 

“I know, I know. Disgusting.” 

Karkat walks you to the door. You stand there for another minute, just looking at each other like a couple of lovestruck idiots. D texts you again, the vibration reminding you that he’s waiting outside, so you duck down and kiss Karkat. “I gotta hurry, can’t leave my adoring fans waiting.”

“Yeah, sure.” Karkat chases your lips as you pull away and kisses you one more time. “Get out of my house already, asshole.”

Another chaste kiss. One more. And another. 

“Okay, okay, jeez.”

You, by some miracle, finally manage to pull away from him.

“Now stop polluting my walkway with your douchiness. It’s starting to stink in here.” Karkat play-shoves you out the door, and you mock-trip in response. It gets a snort from him, and a laugh from you.

God, today feels good. You wish you could replicate this feeling and just repeat it, ad nauseam. It’s the first time in a long while that opening up to someone hasn’t made you feel sick to your stomach. And it’s a welcomed change. Self-disgust gets tiring after a while.

When you hop in the car, D’s rocking out to some tunes like the old man that he is. It never fails to put you at ease though, he’s an open book, and the easy atmosphere only adds to the _good_ day you’re having.

It starts to seem a little off, though. Almost like it’s more than you deserve. Or something like that. Something that your loved ones would probably have some choice words about you believing.

But you can’t always help thinking like this. Shit’s getting too good, and there’s always something on the other end waiting to dropkick you back to reality. 

You think back to what Courtney said. 

_“So if you were never allowed to get comfortable and settle into yourself, what makes you think that you’d suddenly be able to do that now? You were raised to believe that being comfortable is just another sign that you’re about to get hurt.”_

Even repeating it to yourself over and over again doesn’t really convince you. Being “okay” or, dare you say, “happy” is still something you’re not completely sold on. There’s always something, there’s always something else waiting for you to let your guard down.

And you end up being right about that. 

Maybe you sabotaged yourself by thinking about it too much, but your mood is ruined pretty swiftly that night by one of the worst nightmares you’ve had in months.

You’re standing at the edge of the apartment complex’s roof. The roof you shared with Bro on many, many occasions. You’re looking down. You’re looking down, but there’s no bottom. It’s all black, like an endless pit or a chasm.

The sound of metal clashing against metal plays on a loop from somewhere in the distance, a sick, never-ending series of parries that strikes you to your core.

You’re not sure what you’re doing at the edge, but you think that maybe you were going to jump.

But you pussy out, too afraid of the nothingness that’d greet you. It's a long, long way down.

When you go to turn around, the rest of the roof is gone and only the ledge remains. You look to the side. Bro is there, sword in hand, and he’s slowly creeping in on you, shimmying closer and closer on the edge towards you.

Suddenly, he lunges, and you close your eyes as the breath leaves your lungs, convinced that you’re about to find out what being dead is like anyway. He can’t even let you choose for yourself. In the end, you don't even have the autonomy to pick your own fate, that's in his hands. Always has been. He has to take control of everything, even your death, to be satisfied. But instead of stabbing you with his sword, you’re suddenly on your back, being stabbed with something else. 

Something more R-rated.

You don’t open your eyes; you don’t think you can. If you see his sweaty body above yours, even for a second, you think you’ll hurl. You don’t open your eyes. You don’t. You can’t. You need this to be over. You need it to be over. You.

Fuck, you thought this was over.

You let yourself think you were safe, and this is what happened. Bro’s voice is coming from somewhere. Maybe from above you, maybe from inside your head. _You really fooled yourself, huh, lil’ man?_

_Look at what you’ve done to me._

Something warm drips onto your chest, but not what… Usually ends up on you when he’s doing this sick shit to your body. Your eyes burst open in shock. Blood. It’s blood. It’s everywhere. You’re in a pool of blood, an ocean of it, really, and you start to drown.

It’s thicker than water, so you get the pleasure of trashing around as you sink. Slowly, slowly, slowly, as you suffocate.

When you come to, you’re in another black room, and Bro’s corpse is flat on the floor. His neck is slit, and you nearly throw up again, the panic fluttering in your chest, nearly sending you over the edge. Should you check on him? Should you leave him be?

Even though he’s dead (there’s no way he couldn’t be) Bro speaks to you. His mouth doesn’t move. But he's definitely speaking to you. Fuck. You can't breathe. He's mad, he's mad, and somehow, he's going to make you pay for it.

_You did this to me._

_Look at what you’ve done to me._

You did this?

You shake your head and take a step back, but bump into something solid. It's a body. A solid, hot body. When you whip around, it’s another Bro, and though he doesn’t make any moves to grab at you, he stands there, watching, waiting for you to do something. Anything.

_Why did you kill me, Dave?_

You wake up with a start, a gasp, and you’re drenched in sweat. God. Fuck. You can’t. You—

You’re on your feet and in the bathroom before you even register that you’re throwing up. Your entire body is screaming, and you feel the phantom burn of Bro’s rancid _thing_ up your ass. Apparently, your body thought you needed a little refresher on how that felt. Because you've gotten too used to living without it. 

After a minute of throwing up, the light flickers on, and D is at your side in an instant. “Oh fuck, Dave, are you okay?”

“I killed him,” you sound pathetic. He’d beat you for sounding like this. He’d be so disappointed. And you had the absolute nerve to be happy earlier. He'd be so angry that he wouldn't even make a sound as he closed in on you, you bet. He'd be silent, and he was always more terrifying when you couldn't hear him coming. “I killed him, it’s my fault.”

“Whoa, hey, slow down—” D grabs a hand towel and starts to wipe at your face. You don’t even react. You just sit there, a sad lump of flesh. At least you don’t think you’re going to puke again. “Killed who? Did you have a bad dream?”

“I killed Bro,” you say, drawing into yourself. It's rollie pollie time. Rollie Pollie Dave time, all curled up in a ball so no one can see how pathetic you've become. You suddenly feel unworthy of D’s attention. Unworthy of his love and care. This is all your fault.

“What?” D’s shock is clear. You think he’s about to pull back in disgust, but he gets closer. That was his brother. He should _despise_ you for what you've done. “Dave, you know that’s not true.”

“Like hell it’s not true.”

D throws the hand towel somewhere. Parts of your dream try to resurface, so you shove them deep, deep down. Sharp, violent movements. Sharp, violent violations. 

D sighs. “Dave, Bro died because he overdosed. That’s not your fault, that could never be your fault.”

But isn’t it? Everything has always been your fault. You were never fast enough to evade Bro when he was alive, you weren’t fast enough to notice that something was wrong when he died. That’s all on you, it has to be.

But the longer you sit there on the bathroom floor, your mind begins to clear. God, you’re being ridiculous, aren’t you? Of course you couldn’t have stopped Bro from overdosing.

He did whatever the hell he wanted whenever he wanted to do it. You know better than most people that you could never control a single thing he did, period. 

Yeah, you guess your nightmare made you flip out more than you would’ve liked to. Talk about melodramatic.

When you look up to D, the shame slams into you full-force, so you school your features and get that shit back together. “Sorry. Fuck. I had a bad dream, guess it triggered me or whatever. I feel fine now.”

He can obviously tell you’re trying to weasel out of receiving comfort, of course he can tell. Instead of pushing you, he lays a hand on your arm and stands, grunting as his old man bones pop. “Get to your room, I’ll go get you some warm milk, okay?”

“Warm milk? What am I, five?”

“Just let me get you some warm milk, okay? It’s an excuse for me to make myself a glass, how about that?”

“Aren’t you lactose intolerant, D?”

“And if I am?”

“Fine, fine,” he helps you to your feet and waits for you to rinse a few times before he leaves to the kitchen. Once your mouth tastes less like ass, you get back into bed, too sweaty to put your covers back on just yet. You’re a clammy ass bastard, it’s you. 

As you get more clear-headed, you try to chase how it felt to have that dream. _”What would it be like to sit with that feeling?”_ the shrink inside your brain questions.

It feels bad, but you try to do it anyway, and you don’t get very far. The moment you hit the sort-of-memory of him plunging into you like some perverted plumber showing up to shoot a porno, you have to shut that shit off fast. Yet still, a bunch of mental images pop up, unbidden, and you struggle to keep yourself composed.

D comes back pretty quick, and you’re thankful for the distraction. A cup of warm milk. You stare at it for a minute, enjoying the feeling in your palms, and sip it slowly, focusing on how nice it is to taste something other than your own vomit. 

You both sit in silence for a bit. D is trying not to pry, but you can tell he’s curious.

“I really am okay now, dude. I just freaked a bit.”

D nods, bobs his head with his mouth set in a straight line. “Do you… Want to talk about your dream?”

“Not really,” you say, because you really, really don’t. 

D nods again. You fall back into silence. You drink your milk and D drinks his. He tells you to get him if you need anything. Then he just... leaves. He respected your boundaries, didn’t push you, did everything right.

So why do you still feel so alone? This _is_ what you wanted, isn’t it? To have everyone leave you alone? To have everyone pretend that you're fine when you're obviously not?

Your phone pings, and you grab it, craving the distraction.

TT: I heard you throwing up approximately 50% of your body weight a bit ago. You good? 

TG: rosy as fuck 

TG: more rosy than the goddamn rose parade 

TG: or the valentines isle in early february 

TG: that is to say 

TG: im doing pretty great right about now 

TT: Did you have a dream about him? 

TG: did you really gotta ask that 

TG: who are you 

TG: rose? 

TT: If only. Being a Lalonde seems infinitely amusing. 

TT: But as always, my doors are open. My metaphorical doors, that is. 

TT: Unless this client can be considered a door of sorts? Or a window? 

TT: A window into my thoughts as I type this stupid, bullshit scenario out to you? 

TG: as much as i enjoy your bullshit scenarios 

TG: im going to try for some sleep again 

TG: unlike some people i know cough 

TT: I do my best work once I reach the point of near-death. You know this, no need to cough in my direction. 

TG: cough cough cough 

TT: Feel better. I hope you sleep well for the rest of the night. 

TT: It’s the least you deserve. 

TG: thanks man 

TG: don’t die gnight

As soon as you get Dirk off your back, you lay in bed for a while longer, staring at a still-unfamiliar ceiling. It doesn’t resemble what you’re used to, even though you’ve been in this room for years. So much for that conversation serving as a distraction from your thoughts.

You’re worried that in your mind, there’ll always be one Ceiling. One Ceiling from your view on Bro's nasty futon, prone as you'll ever be as you stare up and count the bumps, wondering how much longer it'll last this time. If this is the last time, or if there'll surely be another time to come. _When_ the next time will come. How much it'll hurt. 

You need to stop that train of thought right this instant. 

Closing your eyes, you try to relax through the images flashing behind your lids. Did that really happen _to you_? Sometimes you find it hard to believe.

But that is you. He did that to you. It kind of makes you feel bad for the kid you used to be. The kid in that nightmare-quasi-memory.

The self-compassion is unfamiliar and somewhat sickening. Courtney would probably say that it’s a reflection of how Bro taught you to see yourself or something. You're like a bothersome child that needs to be stuck in the corner. Or poked around with by a sword.

Let’s stop that train of thought. You don’t need any more insight on how fucked up you were raised to be. You don’t need to be reminded that even the way you treat yourself has been tainted by Bro. Not tonight, at least.

You wait for the flashbacks to pass, focusing on D’s kindness, on the words that you cling to.

_That’s not your fault, that could never be your fault._

It could never be your fault. Never. D said never. As in: it’s unequivocally Bro’s fault and Bro’s alone. He did this. He did this to you, he did this to himself. 

It helps settle you. 

Even if you can’t bring yourself to fully believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty for reading! im also taking the opportunity to plug some lyricstucks ive done in the past that are davekat and/or bro and dave related:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb7JfJ0EYFE
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFwNmcJMm4E (epilogue spoilers in this one)
> 
> see u next update!


	7. Chapter 7

“I think I want to bring D in for my session next week.”

Courtney nods along to your suggestion, ever the picture of perfect thoughtfulness. You've been nervous to bring it up to her even though you know it probably won't be a problem. Yeah, you're more nervous about what's sure to come after. Of dealing with the crap you'd rather not deal with. Ever. 

But after your last bout of panic—that nightmare—you considered your options extensively. Rationally, you know that recovery is a process, but it just feels like something isn’t working. It's like you're standing in front of the door to your happiness, but everyone neglected to give you a working key. 

Bringing D in just seems like the next step as far as pushing yourself through that door goes. D is the key, if you want to get lyrical up in here.

“Well,” Courtney hedges with the voice she uses when she’s trying to decide if you’re really ready for something or if you're just trying to force it. “We haven’t had him join you in a long while. Did something happen?”

She’s right about that. It’s been a year or two, you think…? Last time, you had to lay down some ground rules with D because you were too bad at expressing your boundaries on your own. It had been pretty standard stuff, like asking him to be more aware of how he approached you, how he stocked the cupboards, and so on. 

But this time, it’s a bit different. You want to talk to him about something you've been more secretive about, and it makes you feel _way_ more vulnerable than you did when you were fresh outta Bro's clutches, just asking him to buy more Doritos so you didn't think he was trying to starve you.

You realize that you should probably respond to Courtney before she gets the wrong idea. Silence is usually telling, after all. “No, nothing happened. At least, it wasn’t anything that he did.” 

“So something _did_ happen.”

“Jesus Christ, lay off with all this perceptiveness, will ya?” And yeah, maybe you're joking to try and take the edge off from the anxiety building up in your chest. “Can’t a guy be cagey for once?” Courtney huffs a small laugh, but she's still waiting for your response. 

You guess you should give her something to work with. Cracking bad jokes to shield yourself from your emotions doesn't seem like the best use of your time here.

“I guess something did happen. I had another nightmare after I got back from Karkat’s house? It was like the moment I was doing good, my brain wanted to conjure up the most fucked up shit it could. And it succeeded.” You take a shaky breath, realizing that you talked until you literally ran out of air. “And I know that it’s the whole ‘my body doesn’t know how to accept being okay’ thing, but I’m kind of fucking sick of it.”

“It’s understandable that you’d be sick of it, Dave. Dealing with these lingering symptoms causes a lot of frustration, and for good reason. We can revisit some relaxation techniques later if you’d like to, but first I’d like to get back to D.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”

“So how does this tie in with wanting to bring D in for a session? Did you want to talk to him about what you’ve been experiencing lately?”

You pick at the skin around your nails. God, you really need to stop doing that. Karkat's not gonna want to hold your scaly ass hands if you keep at it. “Not exactly…? He already knows about the nightmare and stuff, he actually helped me when I was puking my guts out afterwards. It was mad embarrassing.” 

_Pick, pick._ If you keep this up, you’re going to start bleeding. You shift so you’re almost sitting on your hands instead, forcing yourself to look away from them. “I was actually thinking that we could talk about the… Bro and the uh—the sex shit.”

Courtney raises an eyebrow at you. “Is that something you actually want to do for yourself? Or is it just something you think you owe D? And be honest, because there’s a huge difference there.”

You have to think about it, because you’re not too sure. Sometimes, your true intentions are impossible to discern from your need to be a people-pleaser. Are you ever _really_ doing anything for yourself, or are you just endlessly trying to appease the people you care about to keep yourself safe from imagined threats? 

The world may never know.

“I don’t know,” you say. Honesty. Let’s start there. “I think a part of it is guilt…? The whole uh, owing people thing. I’m not going to lie, another part of it is because I think I’m healing too slowly, and I know that’s bullshit and all, but…” 

There’s some selfishness buried deep underneath all that, though. And that’s what you’re trying to get at with this. Because even though a huge part of your recovery hinges on the desire to get better for _others_ , there is something else there, too. Something that you have trouble putting into words. Maybe it's difficult because you're not used to being allowed your own desires, now that you think about it. 

“But...” You have to try anyway. “I think deep down, it’s sort of for myself too. I think I’m reaching the point of being so fed up with being frustrated that I’d rather push myself too hard than pussyfoot around for a few more years. You know? Like, I’d rather find out I have a hard limit by crossing it than just waiting for that limit to find me, or worse, never putting myself out there in the first place. Then I'd really be stuck like this, a neurotic dickbag forever.”

Courtney leans her head on her hand and nods again, humming as she considers what you said. “So just to make sure I understand… You’re feeling frustrated about being frustrated. So you want to push yourself a bit, not just for the people you love, but for yourself?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, I’m just sick of letting life trample me, of going along with it as it happens. And I’m even more sick of the—the sex shit taking control of my relationship with Karkat. So it isn’t just for other people, I’m kinda trying to flex my selfishness muscle for once.”

“That’s great to hear, Dave.” Courtney shifts in her seat to grab the notepad on the desk next to her. After she uncaps her pen, she looks back up to you, ready to plan. “Alright, alright. So you wanted to talk to D about the sexual abuse you went through. How do you picture it going down? What’re your goals for the session?”

“I think I just want to be able to say it,” you say, honestly. You’re still incredibly nervous at even the mention of it, but you don't want to be. “I already kind of told him and all, but I was vague. The hope is that actually saying it and like… you know, not making him infer, will maybe help me come to terms with it? Or at least work up to being able to tell Karkat, or even just myself. Because every time the thought even touches my conscious awareness, I nope the fuck out.”

Yeah, nope the fuck out may be putting it lightly, if your isolation and panic are anything to go by. 

“It’s really mature of you to want to be able to confront the truth of what happened to you, Dave.” Again, Courtney hits you with one of her patented smiles, the I-Think-You’re-Doing-Great smile that never fails to make you feel that maybe you do have some progress to be proud of after all. She writes something down, then sets the paper aside. “Why don’t we practice now?”

“Uh, how?” 

You don’t think you thought this far ahead, because now it’s starting to freak you out again. Coming to terms with the shit Bro did to you? The more-than-just-physical-abuse shit? What do you think you’re doing? Physical abuse is clear-cut for the most part. It's bad, and you know that now. But the other thing? That's more dangerous territory. 

“You don’t need to say anything you’re uncomfortable with, but maybe it’ll help to practice in a space like this, with just the two of us. Like you said, just being able to say it, ‘I was sexually abused,’ is a real step towards active acceptance.”

“Oh, uh.” Your brain stalls for a minute. How would that even work? Doesn't that sound fucking stupid, just saying it like that? “How should I… Say it.”

“However you’d like to. Or not at all, if you’re not ready to. And you don’t have to completely believe it yet, either. I know we've touched on your self-blame before, and truly believing that it was abuse and not just something you sought out can be hard.”

“So just saying it is a step forward?” You have to keep your gaze fixed to the carpet to keep yourself from combusting. It just feels so wrong to admit, or even say aloud. But you owe it to Karkat, to D, to Rose, Dirk, Jade, John, _yourself_. “And I don’t have to believe it yet?”

Courtney hums an affirmation. “But if you’re not ready, that’s fine. Rushing can make symptoms worse and there’s no harm in taking things slow.”

But you can’t. You need to do this. You just have to. So you open your mouth, and at first, no words manage to make it out. Here comes the zany little Brain Bro, here to strangle the words right out of you. To keep you silent and afraid. 

_Fuck that._

The words do come, albeit quietly, like you’re whispering or croaking them out into a void, a chasm, or a blackhole that sucks them straight from existence. You don’t have to believe them yet, she said. And you don’t, you're not ready to let go of that self-blame right now. Not in the slightest.

But you say it. “I… Was sexually abused.”

You sit in silence with her for a minute or two before she checks in on you, asking how you’re feeling, and you reply that you’re not doing great, but you could be doing worse. You said it. You said it, and that’s worth something. Courtney said it was _worth something_. And you didn't explode, so hey, that's a win too.

Once she’s sure that you’re not about to flip out, she grabs her notepad again and you both move on to discuss the details. What you want to say, what her role in the session will be, and so on. By the time your hour is up, you’re ready to go sleep for a few hundred years. 

You feel like you’re sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Or in the middle of the Grand Canyon, deep between the walls of rock. Or out in space, with nothing in sight for lightyears in every direction. It’s expansive, it’s hollow— _you’re_ hollow. 

It’s like a weight’s been lifted, but in the process, or maybe as a direct consequence, you’ve ended up untethered. Unmoored. In a way, it’s kind of scary.

D picks you up from therapy, and you’re more out of it than you’d like to be. On the bright side, you didn’t combust the moment you said the big bad A word out loud though, right? It still doesn’t sit with you right, but you remind yourself that you got through it anyway. 

You end up taking your phone out of your pocket before D even makes it to the freeway, desperate for some sort of distraction. 

Turns out someone pestered you. Actually, a few people. Looks like John opened up a memo board while you were having your session.

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] opened memo on board HEY LOSERS! -- 

EB: alright, i have had enough! 

EB: we need to have more voice calls, stat. preferably at night on the weekends. 

EB: i think i’m going to die 

EB: and i mean DIE 

EB: if i have to be in the same room with my dumb room mate and his DUMB friends one more night! 

TT: Let me guess. Fortnite, Mountain Dew, sets of particularly crumbed up fingers, and stacks of dubious doujins? 

GG: ewww rose!! D: 

EB: oh GROSS. 

EB: yes to the fortnite and the crummy fingers but no to the doujins 

EB: but what they are doing in our dorm doesn’t matter! 

EB: what matters is that i am sick of it and i miss my friends 

GG: but we are always here for you john! you know that 

GG: just a ping away thanks to the wonders of modern technology 

GG: and if you ever forget it wellllll 

GG: i’ll just have to remind you in the form of a nice loving punch in the face ;)! 

TT: Violence disguised as love can be quite powerful, John. I’d watch out if I were you.

Aaaaaand you promptly nope out of that conversation, too. You probably should’ve stopped the moment you read “dubious doujins,” but like an idiot, you thought it’d be fine. Now you’re borderline panicking in the passenger seat of D’s car, and he’s obviously going to notice if you don't shove it all back down. 

Fuck. God fucking dammit. So much for that serving as a distraction. 

“You good?”

Of course D notices, there’s no way he could miss how weird you’re being. He'd have to be fucking dead to miss it. 

“I, uh, yeah. I'm good,” you blurt, like the absolute god of human conversation that you are. He can _tell_ you’re lying, why are you trying to pretend that you’re good? That you’re even remotely chill? Global warming is real, chill is fake, the polar icecaps are melting, and your sea levels are rising faster than the GOP can say "fake news."

“You sure?”

In a desperate attempt to find some footing and gain control, you say fuck it and take a deep breath. Originally, you thought you’d work up to asking him for another group session, but what better time to ask than when you’re losing your shit over it? You are a paragon of good ideas. Galaxy brain.

“Hah, actually? Not really. I talked to Courtney about maybe doing a session with you again? Next week?”

D stiffens up. “Did I do something wrong, Dave? Like, it’s okay if I did, I’m sorry if I fucked up again or—”

Hearing him blame himself, kind of like Karkat does, helps deescalate your panic. See? He isn’t freaking out. He thinks _he_ did something wrong, you complete asswipe. You rush to assure him before he gets the two of you into a car accident. “No, you didn’t do anything dude, I just wanted to talk to you about my shit. Not your shit. You didn’t do anything, it’s just for good ol’ communication purposes.”

He relaxes his shoulders and you take the time to try and calm yourself down too. Everything’s fine. Look. Everything is so fucking fine. 

“Oh, okay, sounds good dude. Next week?”

“Yeah.”

“Sick.”

And that’s that. The impending doom of needing to be vulnerable with D next week still looms overhead, but you got that part out of the way. 

You turn to stare out the window, focusing on the passing scenery instead of everything that you’re dreading. D already knows, you remind yourself. The worst is over. You’re going to prove to yourself that you know how to be real with your loved ones. 

He knows. He knows. He knows, already. What’s the worst that could possibly happen? Nothing. Literally nothing. Still, the idea of anyone seeing the real you scares you more than you can even put into words. It makes you never want to interact with another human being again. And if you weren't such a socially needy dude, you might've actually considered escaping to a remote cave by now. 

Your brain kicks into overdrive against your will. By the time you get back to the apartment, you head to your room immediately, feeling some weird urge possess you. Without really consciously deciding to, you open up your bottom desk drawer and rifle through the mess of random crap until you find what you’re looking for. 

It’s a book Courtney recommended to you a while back. You’re not the biggest reader, so you never really did more than flip through it. But something is drawing you to it again after all this time. Maybe your frustration, or your desperation. 

Or maybe, what draws you to it again after all this time is that unmoored, lost feeling you have from naming your experience aloud. 

Regardless of what drives you to open the book (a BOOK. Who are you and what did you do with Dave?) you get through the first few pages without much pause. It’s all pretty standard stuff that you’ve learned from therapy.

Yet, a few pages in, something gives you pause. 

You recognize a term in there. Emotional Flashback. Courtney uses that sometimes.

_As I write this I recall the first emotional flashback I was ever able to identify…_

The author describes how an old girlfriend of his had yelled at him during an argument. The reason for the argument had escaped him, but the feeling stuck with him, even after many years. _It felt like a fierce hot wind. I felt like I was being blown away, like my insides were being blown out. I felt terrified and very, very little._

Your heart starts to squeeze in your chest at how brazenly he writes about his experience, an experience you've had yourself time and time again. Your eyes skim to the end of the page and your throat gets tight with the pent up emotion that floods you. 

_A sense of feeling small, young, fragile, powerless and helpless is also commonly experienced in an emotional flashback, and all symptoms are typically overlaid with humiliating and crushing toxic shame._

The last word sticks with you as something you’ve identified in yourself over the years. Shame. You’re ashamed. You feel fucking terrible for all these things you can’t control. You feel terrible for the things you can control. You feel terrible for pretty much everything, and most of the time it doesn't even make sense, not even to yourself.

This information isn’t completely new to you, you’re pretty familiar with non-traditional flashbacks at this point, but seeing it written like this hits you harder. Courtney may be a great listener and an even greater therapist, but she’s never been through what you’ve been through.

This guy has though.

You spend the rest of the day reading an actual book for the first time in years, overcome by the need to understand, even just a bit. You think you want to cry, but the tears refuse to come. The desperation that drove you to dig this thing back up keeps you reading late into the night. 

In a weird way, empathizing with this dude makes it easier to reflect back on yourself. You feel compassion for him, and he went through something similar to what you went through. 

He hated himself for a long time. He isolated. He hid himself behind a jokey persona. It hurts how much you _get_ it. 

_So why not feel some compassion toward yourself for a change?_

The familiar disgust curls up, but it isn’t as strong as it usually is. The idea is more manageable. 

Next week, you’ll tell D that you were sexually abused, with those words. It won’t be new information, but it’ll be a new experience for the both of you all the same. You try to say it to yourself as you flip the pages. “I was…”

It feels too stupid, like you're giving yourself credit for shit that never even happened, for shit that you brought on to yourself. You can’t manage it on your own just yet. Something stops you. _Bro_ stops you.

Toxic shame, huh?

You sit with it and let yourself feel what you feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the book references is a cptsd book by pete walker that id really recommend, its a good read
> 
> thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all! i was on a road trip this week and i think driving for all that time got me sick, so bear with me if there are any typos or inconsistencies in this one. i was mostly focused on getting something out between my fever chills
> 
> also, this is an important chapter before dave & d's joint session. it really lays down some of the issues with consent that dave has, so be careful with that. he's goin thru it.

Once you’ve read yourself into a headache, you finally work up the energy to respond to John's group memo. Yes, you’re down to start voice chatting more often. Yes, you’re doing pretty okay, thanks for asking Jade. Yes, you miss them all a lot and want to talk more. 

Setting aside the book is a hard thing to do, but once you’re feeling slightly more stable, you know it’s time to take a break and nourish your physical form. Water, food—all that good stuff. 

D has Fateful Findings playing out in the living room for some godawful reason, so you sit with him for a while to cash in on some uncle-nephew bonding time. The food can wait for a second, you're craving some normal human interaction after entrenching yourself in the memories of your fucked up childhood. 

“Shouldn’t you be at work, D?”

“Maybe,” he says, and you both leave it at that, content with watching Neil Breen humiliate himself like the absolute legend he is. God, you love this dude. He’s a gift to humanity and you’re starting to think that maybe, this dude might be superior to even—gasp—Ben Stiller. _Mr. Breen, I salute thee._

While Mr. Breen assaults his unsuspecting laptops on screen, D turns to you, tone casual. “You were in your room all day yesterday; did you make sure to eat?”

You did neglect to do that. Oops. And you were just about to get yourself something, too. You probably should've done that before you sat down, huh. 

Your silence gives you away, but you shrug despite yourself. Back with Bro, you’d go longer without food, so you know that maybe it wasn’t the best to go without eating all day, but you’ve had worse.

D’s worried, borderline fatherly _look_ makes you kind of… Weirded out? Disgusted? Confused? All of the above? You give him an exaggerated sigh to curb the fluttering in your chest.

“I was just coming out to get myself food, alright? Blame Neil Breen, he distracted me.”

“Ok, fair, he does have that effect on people. But you should probably grab something. Want me to cook you some lunch?”

You wave him off and get to your feet. You _are_ a full ass adult, after all, and you can handle putting together a sandwich or something. And wow, look at that, you make a sandwich without panicking or freaking out or worrying that the food is going to melt through your fingers like sand.

Progress. 

You eat from the kitchen counter, too hungry to bother moving to the table. While you scarf it down, your mind wanders back to that book. Reevaluating your actions in the context of what Bro did to you always fucks you up a bit. It makes you face how avoidant you really are as a person, and that’s never something you particularly enjoy thinking about. Butterfly effect ass shit, that's what it is.

Still, even with all that context, there’s some desperate part of you that wants to prove that you’re fine, that you can buck up and face the shit you’re scared of. But that isn’t healthy, is it? Forcing yourself like this?

You don’t know what to do with yourself. That's what it comes down to. You're trying to learn how to be okay with the inconsistency, but that's a hard thing for a guy like you to pull off. 

Before you can think too hard about it, your phone pings. 

CG: HEY ASSWIPE. DO YOU WANT TO HANG OUT TODAY?

CG: I MISS YOU.

TG: yeah sure

TG: you can come over if you want

You stare at your messages for a few moments, wondering why the fuck you said yes. You know damn well that you’re not in the mood to see anyone, so why are you forcing it? What are you trying to prove to yourself? That you can handle it? That you’re not an avoidant coward? CG: GREAT!

CG: I’LL BE OVER IN A LITTLE BIT IF THAT SOUNDS GOOD …?

TG: sounds great man see you soon

He sounds so excited to see you. You don’t know why you don’t feel the same way, but the guilt slams into you full-force. 

Waiting for him to get to your house proves to be a whole form of torture in and of itself. D and Dirk both leave at some point, and you fidget with your phone in a last-ditch attempt to distract yourself. 

Why are you so fucking anxious? There was nothing in Karkat’s tone that was suggestive, yet you’re still strung out with anticipation and dread that you yourself have trouble labeling. 

Even though reading that book was eye-opening in a lot of ways, it’s dredged up a whole lot of shit you’d rather keep buried. Especially in front of normal, semi-regularly-adjusted people like Karkat. 

A knock at the door jolts you out of your self-hatred spiral. Maybe you can enjoy having him over. Maybe you can get over yourself and entertain him for a while. You’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t get the wrong idea, because you don’t trust your ability to say “no” right now, especially since you’ve been a pretty lousy boyfriend lately, and all you want to do is make it up to Karkat. But what you'd sacrifice to make it up to him in the first place scares you. 

You open the door even though every part of your body, down to the very last cell, resists. 

A body crashes into yours, hugging at you and rubbing your back. Fingers slip down to grab at your hips. When Karkat pulls away, he’s smiling like a total goof, and you force yourself to smile back, not wanting him to feel unwelcome. Look at how happy he is. Why aren't you? 

“Hey.” Karkat gets on his tip-toes to kiss you, and at the last minute, you turn your head to the side. You stay rigid in his grip as his lips make contact with your cheek, and you pray he doesn’t notice how uncomfortable you are, or that you purposely avoided The Frontal Smooch. “How are you?” 

“Good,” you say, detaching yourself from him as subtly as you can. “You?” 

“Great now that I’m here. Sorry to sound like a total corn-ball, but I’ve missed you so much.” Karkat goes in for another hug and you hate yourself for wanting to pull away. Stubbornly, you force yourself still so Karkat can get the support he deserves from you. His arms wrap back around and squeeze the breath straight from your lungs. 

At least he’s happy to see you. 

You somehow manage to make it back to your room, hyperaware of the fact that no one else is home and that nothing is stopping you guys from heading straight to bone town. 

God, this is so unfair to Karkat. He takes the time to come see you, let you know that he loves you, and how do you repay him? You shy away from his touch, act all frigid like you have zero emotion whatsoever. 

You guess Bro succeeded in drilling all that shit out of you. When you’re like this, it takes conscious effort to not fly on autopilot. Wants? Opinions? Never heard of them, no sirree. 

It’s kind of terrifying being like this—not being in control of your own mind. It just serves as yet another reminder that you’ve denied Karkat sex for weeks at this point. And really, he has needs, right? 

You’re getting a little lost in your own thoughts. Dragging yourself back into the real world is a challenge, but you manage, and the two of you get on the bed. 

Even though you don’t usually watch TV, you really wish you had one in your room at times like these. Anything that’d serve as a distraction so you could escape the things you’re so afraid of. 

Karkat sits across from you and the silence turns tense. Anticipatory. 

You know what he wants, or what he's wondering if _you_ want, and it makes you sick to your stomach. Usually, it'd be fine, but for some reason, the closer you get to Karkat, the closer you get to confessing what was done to you, the more disgusted you feel. The closer you get to yourself, to what was done to you, the more distance you want to create. 

It’s confusing and painful and all these other feelings that you’d rather run away from. It'd be easier to just drop it all and become a hermit. Your discomfort quickly becomes an anxiety that builds from the inside-out, threatening to send you into full-blown panic. 

You don't want to be touched. You feel too vulnerable to enjoy something like that right now. You don't want to be touched. Even a kind brush of a hand against yours may make you lose it right now. You really, really don't want to be touched. 

But you don't know how to say no. And more than that, you really, truly feel that you owe Karkat, even though you’ve unpacked that impulse over and over again in therapy. You don’t owe him, yet your body is wired to seek approval, to make things right at all costs. Even at the cost of your own comfort. 

Karkat grabs your hand and you feel every bit of your body screaming at you to pull away. Being touched by your boyfriend shouldn't make your skin crawl. It shouldn't. It's fucking normal, of course he'd want to touch you. He’s trying to comfort you. It’s normal. _It should feel normal._

"You know, if you don't want to have sex it's okay, Dave. I wouldn’t come over to use you like that. I just wanted to see you.” 

Of course he wasn’t trying to come and fuck you like you were nothing. Why did your brain even go there? Is it really that obvious how much you don't want to be here right now? You're such a shitty boyfriend, letting Karkat over just to make him sit in your room with you while you panic, assuming he's about to fuck you like you're just a vehicle for his own pleasure. Jesus Christ, he's not Bro, why is your brain even going there? 

Even though he says he wasn’t expecting to have sex with you, you figure that you ought to give him _something_ , anything. Even if it's just kissing, you think you can manage that right now. Maybe. 

You lean towards Karkat, betraying the desperate signals of distress your body is giving you. "Kissing sounds good right now," you somehow manage to say, even though speaking is getting harder and harder the closer you get to him. 

"Okay, okay," Karkat sounds excited. Can you really find it in yourself to let him down now that you've gotten him excited? It’d be shitty to pull back right now just because you were uncomfortable. You’d disappoint him. "Good." 

And he closes the distance. 

Your lips meet in the middle somewhere, all gentle, and your stomach knots up. Kissing for a little is all you can manage. You owe it to him, don't you? 

But you don't. You don't, right? You don't owe anyone anything, that's what Courtney would tell you. She would say that this is unhealthy, but you hate disappointing people, and you hate disappointing the people you care about more. You'd rather suffer and make Karkat happy. You'd rather— 

The next kiss feels foreign, but startlingly familiar. You can practically feel the leather glove grabbing at the back off your neck. Like you're just a tiny animal being yanked around by the scruff. 

A tiny whine escapes you, one that could be mistaken as pleading. Karkat takes it as a good thing. As if you're enjoying yourself. He groans into your mouth and the sound sends chills down your spine. 

With panic that you can barely stave off, you push him off and pitch to the side, gasping for breath. 

"Whoa, you okay?" Karkat leans over you, and even that turns into something sinister and scary, and you can practically feel Bro's ghost haunting your room, the air you're breathing, your own damn body. Fuck this. Fuck this. You are so _sick_ of being like this. 

"Yeah," you say, even though you obviously aren't. "I think I'm getting sick, sorry. I'm suddenly kinda nauseated." 

"Oh." Karkat's eyebrows furrow and he rubs your shoulder in a way that should make you feel comforted, not like you're stuck in a cage with no escape. "Let's stop. You need some water?" 

"Yeah actually that'd be great. Can you—can you get me some?" 

If he's getting you water, maybe he'll stop touching you for a few minutes. Then you can pull yourself together and put some distance between you. Distance you desperately need but don't know how to ask for without sounding absolutely ridiculous, especially after the fact. The last thing you want is for _him_ to feel guilty. 

Karkat gets up to grab you a glass of water and you dig your nails into your scalp the moment he's gone. You're so fucking pathetic. Can't even stand Karkat touching your _shoulder_ without thinking about Bro, or thinking about how trapped you feel, or— 

Okay. You need to pull yourself together. 

What would calm you down right now? 

You fumble for your phone and queue up your "chill the fuck out" playlist. Focus on that. Stop thinking about how incompetent you are as a partner. Stop thinking about how useless you are in the face of vulnerability, how scared you are of saying no, how you 

Breathe. Fuck, just breathe. Your arms are shaking, you think you're going to lose it. You don't want Karkat catching you like this though, so you shove your face into your hands and focus on the music gently washing over you. 

Alright. You can do this. Sweep that shit under the rug, that's future Dave's problem. Right now, just ignore it, shut it off, put it on hold. By the time Karkat comes back with the water, you're back to semi-normal, and you hope he doesn't call you out on your bluff. You turn the music off as he walks through the door. 

"Here. You sure you're okay? It's okay if you're not, asshole. I can go." 

"No, no," you drink the entire glass, grateful for the distraction, however small. It gives you a minute to think about how to respond. "I'll be okay. Sorry about that." 

"Do you just want to watch movies? If you're feeling sick..." His eyebrows scrunch up again in that adorable Karkat-y way, and his considerateness makes your heart hurt. “Don’t push yourself too hard for me.” 

"That sounds good," you say, thankful for the out he's given you. He probably doesn't know how much it means to you. “Yeah man. Let’s watch something.” 

You head back out to the living room and Karkat forces you to lay down on the couch with a blanket while he scans D's movie shelf. Once he’s found one he deems decent enough for his _refined movie palate_ , he starts it up and slots himself next to you. 

“Sorry this is so lame,” you say. “I was feeling fine earlier.” 

Karkat smacks your forehead gently, like he’s reprimanding a child. “Shhh, you can’t control this shit, okay? I mean it when I say that I just wanted to hang out, this is enough for me. Look, we even get to see Steve Carell’s stupid face today, I count that as a total win.” 

You look over to the TV, biting back the impulse to apologize again. “Oh dude. Please tell me you didn’t put what I think you put on.” 

Sure enough, the title screen for “40-Year-Old Virgin” flashes, and you groan into the blankets. 

“What? I’ll have you know this was one of the first movies that helped me learn English while I was a grub!” 

“Bro, who the fuck let you watch the 40-Year-Old Virgin when you were like, a troll baby.” 

“I found it online,” Karkat says, obviously proud of himself. “It was one of the first movies I torrented on my own. Before Dane Cook and Will Smith's works, of course.” 

“Wow, your hacker skills blow me away every time, Karkat. Please, tell me more about how you downloaded illegal movies like the absolute madman you are. I can’t believe I’m dating such a bad boy.” 

“Ew, never say that shit again, Strider.” 

And you laugh, because hanging out with him like this is easier. When you don’t feel like he’s expecting things from you, it’s like you can finally just slip back into your comfort zone. Maybe it’s monumentally fucked up, but you don’t know how to behave with him the moment you cross over from “friends” into “boyfriends.” 

They shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but a part of your brain can’t help but separate the two. As you snuggle in and go back to bantering with Karkat, you try to hold on to the easy, relaxed feeling it gives you. 

Still, you add it to your mental list of things you need to bring up in therapy before allowing yourself to cozy up and focus on watching the movie. For the time being, you can stifle your anxiety, and that’s all that matters right now: trying to make sure you don't slip in front of Karkat. 

He’s nice about your baggage, but you’re still trying to figure yourself out. You’re afraid that if you open your dumb mouth, the words won’t come out right and then you'll screw it up forever. 

Karkat doesn’t try to touch you again, and for that, you’re grateful—even though it makes you feel like the scummiest guy alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a note so no one gets the wrong idea: karkat has no idea that dave is struggling with consent issues. before, they were fine because dave had mostly ignored his sexual abuse history. finally dealing w/ it in therapy and reading more about it can be a huge catalyst for emotional pain and confusion during recovery. 
> 
> aka it gets worse before it gets better
> 
> some more comfort to come in the next chapter!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok .... here it is. d and dave talking about what bro did. there are a bunch of em dashes in this one lol. i just rlly like em
> 
> this one was really cathartic to write, but also fucking exhausting. i wrote it pretty much right after i wrote the last chapter, and was gonna wait to post it (at least for a few more days) but i honestly couldnt hold myself back anymore lol

After a few hours of hangin’, D and Dirk finally come home. At the very least, knowing that you’re not alone with Karkat helps to soothe over your nerves. 

Being so jumpy around the person you should feel most comfortable with doesn’t do you any favors, though. In fact, it leaves you feeling like shit, so once Karkat heads out, you promptly crawl back into bed. 

You know, to hide from every shitty thing you don’t want to face. All that dramatic shit and more.

It’s only Saturday, too, which means you have a whole 6 days to stew in your mushy, toxic feelings until you and D go talk to Courtney. The anticipation is literally killing you, if your stomach ache is anything to go by. 

Dave Strider, died from a stress-induced stomach ulcer at the age of 20. What a headline. 

D checks in on you later in the night to ask if you want some of the weird dinner he cooked. It sounds super frivolous if the name is anything to go by. Like a middleclass White Family dinner, and you’re not sure how you feel about it. 

When you ask D why he’s been cooking more often, he looks away, almost sheepishly. “Well, I thought it’d be a good time to learn. Can’t be a bachelor forever, right? Plus, Dirk’s shrink said he needs to start having real meals. You know how he is.”

You hum, because yeah, you do know how he is. But isn’t this all a lot of work for D? Isn’t it like, an inconvenience? Meal prep’s no joke, if Top Chef has taught you anything. 

“So yeah, we’re getting middle-class up in this bitch,” he says. Maybe _he’s_ where you get your rambling from. “Soufflés and casseroles, now that’s what I’m talking about. I’m not sure I even know what a soufflé is, but I’m gonna learn, kid. Just you wait.”

“Dude, holy shit, please don’t start making casseroles. I think I might run away if you do.”

“Hah, noted. If you have any swanky dish ideas, let me know. Meal planning’s never been my strong suit.”

You huff out a laugh, but something’s still bugging you about all this. You’re not sure if it’s just another irrational thing your brain is cooking up or if you’re right to feel weird about it.

After all, Bro used to let you fend for yourself for the most part. He always claimed he was too busy, too tired, or just not in the mood. As a kid, you got the impression that cooking just wasn’t something you could expect people to do for you. 

You find it in yourself to ask, even though you feel kind of stupid doing so. “Isn’t that like… A lot of work? If you need some help, I mean—” 

“It’s really nothing,” D cuts you off gently. “If you wanted to _help_ sometime, by all means, feel free. Learn life skills and shit. But if you’re implying that it’s somehow, like, a burden or something, that’d be a hard no from me.”

“It just seems excessive, is all. You do a lot of other shit.” 

“If you feel that strongly about it you can help me, but trust me, this is long overdue, kiddo.”

You know what he’s referring to. 

D tries to hide his guilt over what happened with Bro, but you know it’s there, even if he doesn’t outright say it. He’s upset he didn’t pick up on everything sooner, and you guess this is just his way of making it up to you: by being stupidly accommodating all the goddamn time.

He and you aren’t all that different. Even though you don’t get how he could feel that way about _you_ of all people, the sentiment is familiar because you’re the same way. 

You tell him that you yes, you would like to help him sometime and that yes, you would also like a plate of food. At the very least, if you start helping him out, you’ll get better at taking care of yourself. 

It gives you a lot to think about, how D think of you. Despite _knowing_ , he’s still… Doing all this shit for you. Like, maybe he has the wrong impression. Or maybe you don’t deserve to put as much blame on yourself as you’ve elected to do, but you don’t know where that blame would go otherwise. 

Bro’s untouchable even after all these years, and you can’t even begin to pin him down. So there’s no way you can shift the blame on to him yet. 

You may hate him in a bunch of angsty ways, but blaming him just isn’t something you’re comfortable doing. Admitting he was at fault means admitting you did nothing wrong in the first place to warrant all the shit he put you through.

That’s… Hm. You don’t like that. 

D comes back with your food and you thank him before burrowing back into your cozy little pile. Karkat’s texted you a few times, but you really don’t want to talk to him, too overwhelmed by your own conflicted feelings to stomach another spike of anxiety.

John and Jade are also pestering you, asking you to join their voice call, and you make up some bogus excuse to get out of it, promising that you’ll be there next time. You just don’t think that talking to them will make you feel any better either. 

Face it: your friends are all pretty well adjusted, or at least functional enough to go to college and move around the world like regular people. It stings sometimes, knowing that you can’t relate to their experiences. You fear the pity. And now, after tainting the only healthy relationship you’ve ever had, the distinction feels painfully obvious. 

Yeah, you’d rather pass until the guilt lessens. You tend to get pretty sensitive and shut off when you get like this, and the last thing you want to do is ruin John’s voice call too. 

Since you’re already feeling about as raw as you can probably be right now, you crack open your book again. Might as well use your angst productively, since you have almost an entire week to think about your childhood and how you want to tell D about it.

Yeesh. Are you really ready for this?

Regardless of whether or not you’re truly ready for it, time passes all the same, and before you know it, it’s Friday morning, and you’re heading out with D to Courtney’s office. Your stomach, conveniently, is in total knots.

D looks nervous too. He’s not even trying to fill the silence, which just makes it worse. How far can you draw into yourself before you disappear completely? The silence stretches out until the moment you sit down in Courtney’s office.

“Hello Dave, D, how’re you both doing this morning?”

You look at each other, not knowing who should speak first, and fumble to respond. 

“Pretty alright—”

“—Yeah I’m doing pretty alright too.”

“Good to hear,” she says, probably painfully aware of how helpless you both are when it comes to this shit. The last time D was here with you, it was the same. He was nervous, you were nervous, and Courtney did her best to soothe the awkwardness over.

She’s a saint. Sure, it’s her job, but she’s pretty damn good at it. 

“So, me and Dave have already discussed what he wanted to talk about today. Before we start, are there any behavior norms either of you would like to add?”

You and D shake your heads. You did that last time, and there’s nothing new that you can really think of. Listen to understand, not to respond. Respect perspectives. All that fun stuff. It’s been established. 

“Nah, I think we’ve got it,” you say, because you know D doesn’t want to intrude too much on your space, or put words into your mouth, so he won’t be the first one to speak until you get into the swing of spilling your guts out. 

“Great! Shall we start, then?”

Fuck, that means you have to actually _speak_ now. You should’ve stalled for a while longer, because you’re not ready. But you don’t think you’ll ever be ready until you force yourself, and that’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it? Because you’ll be stuck until you push your boundaries. Because you’re sick of feeling alone when there are people who are perfectly up for comforting you right fucking there. 

Okay.

Where to start.

You went over this shit last week. How did Courtney suggest you begin, again? Your brain is completely blank, so you guess you’ll just go for it. Wing it. You can’t bring yourself to look at D or Courtney, so you stare resolutely at the ground. 

Usually, you take your shades off for therapy. But you think you’d feel a little too vulnerable without them on, and with them both looking at you, you know you were right. D doesn’t have his on, and the openness burns. You don’t know how he does it. 

You’re thankful for the barrier. You’re thankful that they can’t tell that you’re precariously close to breaking down.

Fuck, get it over with already. 

“Alright, okay. So I don’t really know how to start with this, because it’s kind of awkward to talk about. And I guess that’s why I wanted to talk about it, and I mean really talk about it, not just circumvent the topic with vague suggestions and roundabout hints and all that shit. Because it’s not really something I like saying out loud or even thinking, and most of the time I don’t even know how to feel about it. But yeah, it’s awkward, and I feel kind of stupid bringing you in here and wasting your morning just to say it out loud like this. I mean, I could’ve done that at home, not like, um…”

You trail off, realizing that you’re really, really rambling. Not just your brand of regular rambling, but the full-on “I’m putting off the inevitable by being an overly wordy jackass” rambling that’s so characteristic of your ilk. 

Courtney’s told you time and time again that you’re not a burden, that you’re not wasting anyone’s time. Hell, D’s probably told you that more times than your therapist has. Yet you’re still worried, still convinced that when your mask peels back, they won’t like what they see.

You can’t put this off anymore, though. You can’t.

No one’s talking. Why is no one talking? Oh. Yeah. They’re waiting for you to get to the fucking point. You should probably do that. Your heart is beating up in your throat, so you have to work to keep your voice steady.

“Okay, so, D: I know I kind of touched on it a few weeks ago. That um. That Bro didn’t just physically… Do… Stuff… To me. I mean, this thing was physical too, but just—not the type of physical that’s strictly the Will Hunting kind, or whatever. Like not just being knocked around, but you know that, because I’ve told you, and I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I want to say it. That I…” 

You’re not making any sense. All you have to do is say the words. That’s all you have to do. Four words, four simple fucking words. Spit them out. 

“I was—” 

You stop yourself from glancing over to D. You want to gauge his reaction, but he already knows, this is nothing new. All you need to do is say it.

Why’s this so _fucking_ hard?

“I was sexually abused.”

The impulse to keep on word-vomiting is there, but the air in your lungs vanishes the moment you manage to get it out. In front of Courtney, it was hard, but still easier than this. You’d discussed it, and at the end of the day, she’s just a professional. She’s just your therapist. 

D is your uncle. He knew Bro personally. It’s different in so many ways that it sickens you.

You look over to D, finally desperate enough to try reading his facial expression. It’s the same as when you told him the first time without really TELLING him, except this time, he’s not crying his eyes out right out the gate. They’re watering, you think, and he seems like he has a million things he wants to say to you, but he doesn’t, and sits there waiting for a signal or something.

Courtney takes this as her cue to jump in. “Dave, do you want to stop here?” 

You look over to D and shake your head, hoping he’ll get the hint that you want him to say what’s on his mind. You know he doesn’t blame you for anything, but hearing it never hurts, and there’s always doubt lurking, hoping to be disproven. 

“Dave, I. I don’t know what to say. Ever since I got that call from the police station on the day he died, I’ve just… Fuck. I feel like I’ve failed you. I can’t believe I never noticed.”

And fuck, if D doesn’t sound completely miserable. You did this to him by just existing, and it makes your shoulders hunch up. 

“Bro didn’t really let you see me, and you were kind of busy with your own life. It’s not your fault.” 

Courtney weighs in gently, not trying to dominate the conversation, but calling you out regardless. “But there is someone else you blame, isn’t there?”

You shrug, knowing what she’s getting at. There’s a suggestion there: if you don’t want to get into this deeper with D, you can stop. You already told him more than you ever thought you would. But you already did the hardest part, right?

D’s confusion shows in the crease on his forehead.

Just cut to the chase. “I don’t know, shouldn’t I hold myself accountable…? Not you know, for everything, because Bro was just—was just a fucking nutjob sometimes, and I get that. I’m not claiming he never did anything wrong, but uh. I fucking hate saying this, especially in front of you, because I don’t want you to see me any differently. And I don’t know how you could ever look at me the same way if you really knew—”

“—I could never see you any differently,” D interjects, clutching his hands together in his lap. His nervous tic when he wants a cig. He’s been trying to quit, but sometimes he desperately needs one when the stress gets too bad. 

“You’re my nephew. And I love you and Dirk more than anything. You’re practically my own kid at this point, nothing’ll change that. _Nothing_ in this entire world, or even this entire universe. You hear that? You don’t have to prove shit to me, or be good enough, or justify what you had to do to survive my shithead brother’s so-called-parenting,” D takes a breath. You hate that it sounds so shaky. 

“Because I unequivocally and unconditionally _love_ you. I always, always will, Dave. So please, it makes me so sad to see you beat yourself up, or think that I’ll hate you. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Oh.

That was a lot. A whole lot. You look away again and clasp your own hands together. You completely forget that Courtney’s here and that you’ve never once cried in front of her, or even gotten this emotional, because suddenly your voice shrivels up. Becomes small. You’re back in that space where time feels obsolete, and you feel young, lost, and desperate for guidance, or any love you can catch, even in passing.

The feeling of neediness is something Bro always hated about you, yet he relied on you relying on him, on you fishing for his attention constantly. It’s why you always did shit that made your skin crawl until it felt good, until it felt right. It’s why you can’t have a normal relationship now. Not for the life of you. 

D’s words knock you off balance. You don’t want him to see you any differently, but he said none of that shit would matter. He said nothing you did would ever make him think of you differently. 

The tears burn but don’t spill over just yet. Though you don’t make much noise, something breaks inside of you again, just like the first time you told him. The promise of acceptance is there right in front of you, just waiting for you to reach out and take it. 

D moves closer from the chair he’s sitting in and slots himself next to you on the couch. As soon as he puts a hand around your shoulder, you can tell he’s crying too, just from the tremor in his arm. 

You lean into him, closing your eyes so you don’t have to face the outside world when you admit what you’re about to say next. “Sometimes I liked it, I guess. Sometimes remembering how _desperate_ I was for it makes me sick to my fucking stomach.” 

“How can you—Dave… There’s nothing ‘desperate’ about wanting his approval. It fuckin’ breaks my heart that he… That he made you think that you needed to do that shit to even earn it in the first place. Fuck, how long was he doing that sick crap?”

D’s touch doesn’t repulse you, and you’re grateful that your body is letting you soak in the support for once in your fucking life. You squeeze your eyes shut harder, clench your jaw, and turn rigid, trying to keep any unnecessary memories from cropping up. 

“I don’t know. It wasn’t as bad as I make it seem, I think. Once I wasn’t young enough for it to be fun for him, he stopped.” A wet, self-deprecating laugh bubbles out of your mouth before you can clench everything back up. “It’s kind of stupid, how upset I was when he stopped doing that shit to me. It was like one day, I had a way to get him to like me, then all of a sudden, he wasn’t interested anymore? Yet even before, when he did that shit, I think he only did it because he wanted to get a reaction outta me, you know. Fuck, why am I still talking, hah. This is like, way tmi. You don’t want to hear this, it’s so—” 

D shushes you when the tears finally start coming. In a pitiful attempt to appear fine, you laugh at yourself, but the noise sounds broken at best. You’re unraveling, spiraling, and you can feel Courtney cataloging some of the shit you’re saying for another session, because damn, you’re letting a whole lot of self-hatred slip out right now. It’s just hard to not feel like a total idiot for thinking that you could win Bro’s permanent approval, especially with the power of hindsight. 

Some more tears manage to leak out when you start thinking about just how much you needed that approval. What you did for that approval. How much you still kind of crave it, despite knowing what you know now.

It’s fucking sad. How did you never think it was sad, how he ran you around in circles for a pat on the head, like you were just some dog to him.

But D’s approval is a permanent thing, right? He’s here. He’s listening to your bullshit, and not just in the passive way Bro used to do, when he’d sit there all silent and still as if he was a statue. When you were young, you’d crawl into his lap to try and get a reaction out of him, even if he’d fuck you up for it. 

You were touch-starved, and at that point, you guess your body couldn’t tell the distinction between good touch and bad touch. It was all the same. And now, with D’s arm around you, holding you steady, it’s hard to even understand what he’s offering you now. 

The emotion is nameless, complicated, and you want to hide from the way is makes your chest feel simultaneously empty and full all at once. 

“I don’t know,” you say again, mouth pinching tight into a line as you start to cry in earnest. “I don’t know, I don’t know…”

“You don’t have to know.” D moves you side to side, rocking you like you’re a tiny child, speaking into your hair. “You don’t, you don’t have to know anything now.”

“I’m sorry.” It comes out more like a quiet wail than an apology. You’ve never sounded this pathetic in your entire life, of that you’re certain. You’ve never felt this seen. You’re sure that D’s just missing something, that he doesn’t understand what you’ve done, but you told him, so he must. He must understand. But he just doesn’t think you did anything wrong, somehow. 

“Shhh. I’ve got you. You have nothing to be sorry for, okay? Nothing.”

Courtney keeps quiet while he holds you, right up until you manage to pull yourself together. 

She prods back into the conversation. “Alright, we’re almost out of time. I just want to check in to make sure that you’re both okay before we stop. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about? Or anything you’d like from me? Dave, I’m proud of you, you said a lot more than we planned to touch on today.”

“Um, thanks.” You sniff, sounding disgusting and superloaded with snot. “I think I’m good. D, you good?”

“I’m good.” He gives a dramatic thumbs up, even though he looks ridiculous with his puffy eyes and wet face. 

You wrap up the session, and D slips on his shades before you get outside. Trying to be slick, you use your sleeve to wipe at your face. Eugh. You’re all gross and wobbly. D doesn’t say anything about it, but he hooks his arm around your shoulder again and guides you up to the car, even though he doesn’t have to.

He does a lot of stuff he doesn’t have to, huh. 

Slipping an arm around D’s back, you let yourself lean into him.

That wasn’t… The end of the world. It wasn’t fun, not by any means. You’re feeling torn open and exposed, and kind of out of it now, but it wasn’t the end of the world. You tuck that feeling away for later, too. 

“Want some Taco Bell?” D asks, his normal self. Or the closest approximation to his normal self that he can manage. 

Things have changed, but you’re still the same. He’s still the same. And he still loves you. The fact that he still loves you almost makes you start crying all over again. But you’ve cried yourself out, and you have no liquids left for your body to secrete.

You swipe your sleeve under your nose again and nod. “Yeah. That’d be sick.”

“Cool.”

“…Cool.”

The car starts up, and D’s music starts to blare just as it always does.

The world hasn’t ended. You’re okay. You’re both okay. Things are different, but maybe that’s okay too. 

For the first time in a long while, you let your shoulders relax. Some of the anxiety inside of you uncoils, leaving you mercifully in the present to enjoy the moment you’ve been given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, lmk what you think, & thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im not sure how long i want this fic to be, but i think there are only a few chapters left. hmmmmmmmmmm

To cut to the chase: you have another nightmare. 

If there’s anything you’ve learned about “dealing” with your shit, it’s that dredging it up almost always has consequences, whether you like it or not. The consequences aren’t always bad necessarily, but the cause and effect is there, right there, as your brain conjures up the most fucked up scenario it can. Well, consolidation is a real bitch. That's just that.

At first, you’re just minding your own business at your desk. You’re mixing something, or maybe drawing some stupid comic. What you’re doing doesn’t matter, because your focus evaporates as the air suddenly becomes sinister and heavy. LIke a switch being flipped, you realize that even if you don't know what's happening, something's changed, and it isn't good. 

It's in the way the hair on your arms begins to shoot up. In the way your heart rate picks up, certain of some unseen danger. In the back of your mind is the incessant need to get some answers, to understand what's going on. So, despite the fear, you find it in yourself to stand. 

You manage to leave your room, but the lights all go out the moment you cross the doorway. Suddenly, it's so dark that you can hardly see where you're stepping. A spike of fear shoots through you when your feet trample over familiarly plush rumps. Suddenly, the feeling in the air makes sense: you're not home like you thought you were. You’re back in Bro’s apartment.

For a moment, you consider heading back to your room to hide. You don't know if Bro is here, after all. But when you try to take a step backwards, you feel the floor give out underneath you and decide against it. The only path for you to take heads to the living room, and you have no other choice but to take it.

The only thing illuminating the room in here is the TV. D is the first person you see standing around in the harsh light. He’s facing away from you and looking at something on his phone in complete silence. So is Dirk. And Rose. Fuck, John, Jade, and Karkat are here, too. Why is everyone…

You whip around, trying to find Bro, worried he's about to fuck everyone up right in front of you, but he’s nowhere to be found. You don't understand how everyone got here, Bro has locks for days, the only logical conclusion you can come to is that he _let_ them in, but why would he do that? Eventually, you give up trying to find him in the shadows, and when you turn back around, everyone’s looking at you, faces impassive but eyes cold.

“Uh. What’s happening? What’s wrong? Did, um.”

No one bothers responding. 

This is getting mad freaky and you didn’t sign up for it. You go up and grab onto D’s arm, desperate for him to tell you what’s going on. Usually he helps you out. He’s safe. You trust him more than you dare to trust anyone in your life, but maybe you should've known better than to put that much faith into one person. “D?”

He shrugs your arm off with blatant disgust. Your adrenaline spikes. Everyone else looks disgusted with you, too. Something starts flaking off from your face, and you start scratching at the skin, panicked when you notice that it’s _skin_. 

Your face is peeling off. They can see you. They can see it all coming apart.

Karkat pulls out his phone again and starts playing something on it. The moans are familiar and forced, and you stumble back when the realization hits you. Oh god, they’re watching the videos. They have videos. Is that why Bro let them in here? To show them this sick shit? Did they find it on their own? Your hands start to shake, so you shove them into your useless pockets.

As he watches, Karkat’s face pulls into the perfect image of revulsion. You did that, you made him feel like that. Karkat looks up at you, face so impersonal and empty, and in that moment, the room stutters and changes like a glitch. Suddenly, everyone’s facing the couch, perfectly still. If this wasn’t so scary, the fact that they clipped right across the room like shitty Bethesda characters might've been funny. 

But everyone’s watching a version of you and Bro on the couch. They’re just watching, not saying anything. The slap of skin against skin burns. It's burning. It hurts. You try to move. To block their view, push Bro off, anything, but you’re stuck to the side like you’re glued straight to the ground. You're helpless, you're powerless, and there's nothing you can do but wait for it to be over. The familiarity of it all brings tears to your eyes.

The camera that’s recording what’s happening is still rolling in front of everyone. They hate you, they know and they hate you. Their faces show everything you've ever been afraid of confronting. The need to run, the need to make it _stop_. And they all—

You jolt awake, a sick sense of dread making it impossible for you to calm down. Okay. That was fucked up, and definitely dredged up some of your more latent fears. Very fun, very cool, you love waking up like this.

Staying in bed isn’t helping your mounting anxiety, so you force yourself to get up. Get some water. Yeah. Get some water. Anything to distract you from remembering how trapped you just felt in your dream.

Your arms are shaking so you cling to yourself and hunch your shoulders up, rubbing your arms in a desperate attempt to self-soothe. It helps, but just a little bit, and you think you may be digging your fingernails into your arms by accident.

You make it to the kitchen, but stop in your tracks when you see D sitting and watching TV. It’s too late to back up into your room though. He sees you standing there, hunched up and probably crazy-eyed, and waves you over.

Why the fuck is he still awake? 

“You good?”

You didn’t think you’d end up baring your soul to him so soon after your session, but your brain doesn’t give a shit when it’s trying to process shit, you guess. 

You’re obviously not fine. Maybe at this point, D deserves some honesty out of you. “No. Had another nightmare.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

Last time he asked you that, you refused, and for obvious reasons. It felt… Too fucked up to let someone else see. You go to the couch and sit beside him, mulling it over in your head. The offer doesn’t seem as scary as it did before. 

“Um… Yeah. If you’re chill with hearing the shit my brain comes up with.”

“Dude, ‘a course. Lay it on me.” And damn, if D doesn’t look more self-assured. More relaxed. Like he’s confident in your ability to speak and in his own ability to listen. It makes you think back to what Courtney said about letting other people comfort you, and how that can make them feel good too. Or boost their self-efficacy. Fuckin’ weird, seeing it play out right in front of you like this.

You look down at the ground. “Basically, I was in my room, until I wasn’t, because it turned into Bro’s apartment or whatever. And I went out to see what was happening, because the air was tense as shit, but for some reason everyone was there. But none of you would look at me, because you’d seen something that Bro made back in the day and all thought of me differently cuz of it.”

D’s question is gentle, and you can barely hear him with how quiet he says it, like he’s afraid of what he’ll hear. You're afraid to say it. “Something he made?”

“Yeah. You see,” you can’t help but snort. You can’t believe you’re telling him about this. But you guess you’ve already told him boatloads of traumatic stuff at this point. He’s obviously here for the long-haul and probably won't be too surprised by whatever you reveal. 

“He filmed it, sometimes. To this day, in the back of my mind, I wonder where that shit is. If he ever posted it anywhere. I’m terrified that someone’s going to recognize me someday, or someone I know is going to be like ‘hey, just saw this sick porn the other day and the twink looked just like you’ or something like that.”

D doesn’t say anything, but you look over to him, grateful that he doesn’t seem to be judging you. In fact, you see nothing but sympathy in his scrunched-up face.

You bob your head. “Yeah. Yeah. So, I don’t know if he ever ended up posting them anywhere, but it scares me to think that he did, or that one of his friends ended up seeing it and passing it along, you know?”

“Hell, I mean, that’s a pretty understandable fear, Dave. That’s all kinds of fucked up.”

“I guess.” You’re still working on getting comfortable with people acknowledging all… That. Instead, you shrug off the assurance a bit and finish up your retelling of the dream. “Basically, you’d all seen it and looked really disgusted with me. Then I woke up.”

“Jesus.” D hovers near you, arms reaching out, unsure but wanting to lend you all the comfort you could ever ask for. “I can’t even imagine.”

“Hah. It might be better that way, actually.” You lean into him again, and for the second time in the past day, D’s comforting you. It really helps. Why haven’t you let yourself have this before? It kind of fucking rocks.

“None of us would _ever_ judge you for what he did, I know I’ve said that a lot but I mean it. And if anyone did, they’d be dead to me, I hope you know. Shit’s so uncool, but not your uncool, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it man, thanks.” You laugh despite yourself. Once you’re feeling better, you detach from his hug. “For the record, I appreciate it.”

“Don’t even worry about it, it’s all in the job description. You just focus on feeling better, okay?”

“Thanks. Why’re you awake this late though? Everything okay with you?” Shifting the topic away from your own issues helps further loosen the knot in your stomach. And you don’t want this Comfort Road to be a one-way street.

“They’ve just got me running in circles at work. It’s kind of the only time I’ve got to work on my manuscript.”

You try not to feel guilty that D’s not able to get shit done during the week because he spends so much time taking care of you and Dirk, driving you around, working, etc etc. You know he wouldn’t want you to feel bad about it, so you cling to that instead of dwelling on your own feelings of unworthiness.

“Damn. They know you’re human, right? Not some super fancy robot slave they can demand coffee from at every hour of the day…?”

“Ugh, I fuckin’ wish, kid. Once I make it big, then they’ll see.” D shakes his fist in the air and jokes: “They’ll all see!”

Hah. What a fucking dork. “I fully support your vindictiveness, D. I’ll leave you to it, then. Thanks for talking to me, I should probably try to get back to sleep.”

“You sure you’re good? I wouldn’t mind if you just sat while I worked.”

You try for a smile, but you think you just succeed in grimacing. “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks again, you really did help. Just by listening and all that fun crap.”

“Good, good.” D takes a pen out from behind his ear (wow, you didn’t notice that was there) and hunkers over the coffee table, poised above a bunch of messy, agitated notes that just _bleed_ perfect, total irony. He takes one glance back up at you, just to make sure you’re fine, you guess, and nods in your direction. “Night, Dave. Love ya.”

“…Love you too.”

You slip back into your room and lay back in bed. When you stare back up at the ceiling, too afraid to close your eyes just yet, you bite at your lips, considering what it’d feel like to just… Accept that this is the present for you now. 

This is your ceiling until you choose to move out. You’ll never have to deal with what Bro put you through ever again, except for in your memories and in the scatterings of your maladaptive, age-old coping mechanisms. 

You’ll think on it, but you think you’re slowly chipping away at something important here, even if it barely makes linear sense. These past few years have been, in no way, shape, or form, even remotely linear. You’re a huge zig-zag of constant ups and downs, if anything.

But… You’re also starting to realize that maybe happiness isn’t something that’s possible to achieve. Instead, you can maybe focus on enjoying moments of happiness as they happen instead of pretending that one day, things will magically be okay forever. 

Everything with Karkat’s still stressing you out because you know that you’re ignoring him a lot right now, blowing him off just because the idea of being real with him for more than a few seconds is somehow so much scarier than connecting with D is. 

But you’ll deal with that later. You should focus on calming yourself down right now, first and foremost. If you don’t get your body back to baseline levels of “okay” before you go to bed, you know you’ll wake up with an intense anxiety-induced stomach ache again. 

Breathe. Just breathe for now. 

You set your phone out of reach to get rid of the potential distraction and lay down until you’re finally able to dissolve into unconsciousness. Those worries are for another Dave, a future Dave, if you will. 

For now, you sleep, and this is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shorter than usual, but i felt that it was a good place to stop things! thanks for reading


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. much. dialog. 
> 
> hey people, i'm going to be at anime expo so i wont be updating again until sometime after the 7th (unless I manage to find the time to write a chapter on my phone) so i hope this one will do for now!

Sadly, as you’ve realized many, many times before, eventually present Dave becomes future Dave. And future Dave needs to deal with all the issues that past Dave has put off until later. Such is how time works, even though you're not too happy about having to deal with anything, well, _ever_.

When it’s time to become future Dave, you find yourself sitting in Courtney’s office again. It’s finally time to acknowledge your issues with Karkat, you think, which is something you’ve been hesitant to do since… Well, it’s complicated. 

“So, how have things been since last week?”

“Good,” you say, surprising yourself with how honest that answer actually is. A part of you feels uncomfortable admitting that things have been better than usual, the part that waits for everything to come crumbling down around you at the slightest suggestion of stability. “It’s, I mean. Yeah, it’s been good. D’s been great, absolute model father figure and all that.” 

“Oh, that’s great to hear Dave. I bet that’s a load off your shoulders, huh?” 

It really has been. It’s like you can finally stop guarding every part of yourself from being seen, because at least one person in the universe doesn't mind what he sees. You don’t think your shoulders have been this relaxed since the day you were born. It’s weird, but you even feel less awkward and out of place standing around the house, like you don’t need to force yourself to take up as little space as possible. The changes you've noticed have been small, yet it all feels fantastic, period. 

But there’s still something that’s keeping you a little stuck inside your own head. “Yeah, it’s a huge load off. It’s crazy. I mean, I know there’s still a lot to work on, but things feel so much more different now, you know?”

“Well they are different, Dave. And that’s all because of you. I don’t want you to focus on how much left you feel you have to do right now, instead, let’s focus on what you just did!” Courtney makes a dramatic clapping motion. “That nice, relieved feeling you have? That’s all because of you. All because you reached out, all because you were brave and let yourself open up.” 

“Thanks,” is all you can say to that, too uncomfortable with the praise to give her anything else to work with. Your mouth twitches into an almost-smile before your brain shuts that shit down, too weirded out by the concept of... Feeling proud of yourself, you guess.

But deep down, you are kind of proud of yourself. She’s right: you saw something you wanted to change—your relationship with D—and you went out and changed it. You opened yourself up, mended part of yourself, and gave D the self-efficacy to reach right back out to you. And in the end, you guys connected more authentically than you ever have before. 

Shit’s crazy.

Courtney seems proud of you too. “Is there anything else from last week that stuck out to you? Anything you noticed?”

“I mean,” you think on it for a moment, scuffing your shoes against the carpet while you pull up what you remember. “I noticed that I was being uh, pretty self-deprecating when I was talking to D about everything.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“I guess deep down I still think it was all my responsibility. I know that’s stupid, but I can’t really help it. Damn, I did it again, didn’t I?” You bite your lip and try to stop being so fucking mean to yourself every time you open your mouth. “I know it’s because of how Bro felt about emotions. Calling my own feelings stupid or laughing at them is a way I compromise I guess.”

Courtney nods. “It makes sense, especially with how dismissive he was towards you. If you’re critical of yourself while you’re sharing your emotions, it takes some of the sincerity from them, doesn’t it?”

“Then no one has the power to be the one to knock me down, because I’m doing that shit to myself already.”

It sounds kind of fucked up when you put it like that, but you know it's the truth. It’s just another way you scramble for purchase in this newer, unfamiliar lifestyle. Security, maybe. Or a failsafe, just in case things turn south.

“But do you think that anyone in your life right now wants to ‘knock you down’ for anything that you say or do?” 

She’s got a point. You know she's got a point.

“I know rationally that they won’t. But when I’m getting down and dirty with my psyche, opening myself up to people, it’s like, ‘what if’ right? What if this is what changes things, makes everyone flip the fuck out on me. There's always that doubt.” 

“Don’t you think that would have happened by now if it was going to?”

“Fuck,” you take a deep breath to stave off the anxiety threatening to build back up. You know she's right. “Yeah. It probably would’ve by now, huh. I was pretty difficult in the beginning, too, wasn’t I? If they dealt with me then…”

“I’d caution against thinking of yourself as ‘difficult,’ Dave. You lived in an extremely abusive and neglectful household for _most_ of your life, that adjustment period is not easy in the slightest.” 

You shrug, choosing to start picking at the loose threads on your clothing again. Self-deprecation keeps you from a lot of things. It keeps you from getting too cocky and comfortable. It keeps you from accidentally opening yourself up to attacks from other people.

But it also keeps you back from being comfortable with yourself, too. Doesn’t it?

“Okay, yeah, you’re right. I guess I just don’t know how to stop at this point.”

“It can be hard,” she agrees. “But it’s just like what we did with your apologizing. When you feel yourself about to do it, try not to. Notice the reactions you get and how you feel. What do _you_ think would happen if you said something about yourself without diminishing your feelings?”

Answering that makes you noticeably uncomfortable even though you know what you're saying is the truth. “…Nothing.”

“Exactly. If you told D you were sad without saying you were stupid for feeling that way, do you think he’d react negatively?”

“…No. It’s just—” Ugh, it’s hard to describe this. “It makes me uncomfortable because it’s like Bro’s in my head, telling me that I’ll become an egomaniac or something if I let myself believe that I…”

“That you have needs?” 

Damn. Her perceptiveness strikes again.

“Yeah, I guess. I just don’t want to be an asshole or have other people think I’m a self-obsessed douchebag who thinks he’s _sooo_ great all the time.”

“And not calling yourself names will make you a self-obsessed douchebag?” 

“Okay. I see what you mean, that’s kind of s—” Courtney shoots you a look and you realize that you were about to call yourself stupid again. “Okay, it’s a bit _irrational_.”

“It all goes back to the same thing we discussed when we were talking about letting yourself be comforted by other people. Interconnectedness. Do you think people feel good when you call yourself these things?”

“I mean… I guess not?”

“If they care about you, they’ll most likely disagree, right?”

“Yeah,” you say, because the logic checks out. 

“So if you stop saying those things about yourself, don’t you think that’d spread to other people as well? The people who care about you? Of course, remembering that you deserve to feel good about yourself is important. But I know you. And I know that you put a lot of thought into how other people feel, so it might help to remember that other people want to see you feel good about yourself, too.”

It’s weird to consider. Strange. The fact that other people may benefit from you feeling good about yourself. Or… At least not knocking yourself down every time you’re feeling bad. 

“Huh.”

“You don’t have to jump right into it, but think about it, okay?”

“Yeah.” You bite at your lip again, sensing that the topic is done with and it’s time for you to bring up something else. “So, to switch gears, I actually had something I wanted to talk about today.”

She looks expectantly at you, waiting for you to continue. 

“My relationship with my boyfriend. In relation to the uh, the sexual abuse.” It still feels so weird to call it that, to name it out loud. “I know I brought up that it was affecting my relationship with him back when I told you that… That had happened to me.”

“Ah, yes I vaguely remember. We talked a bit about how you felt that it was unfair to drag him into your problems, correct?”

“Yeah. And that’s still you know, holding true and all that, but I think it’s getting to a really unhealthy point and I don’t know what to do. Part of me feels like it’d be easier to be alone than to deal with any of this shit.”

“What do you feel is unhealthy about your relationship?”

God. A lot. “I’m having… Consent issues I guess? I haven’t, um, done anything I didn’t want to do necessarily. Not yet. But I’m terrified I’m just going to sit there and take it, so I keep avoiding him, and I know he can tell I’m avoiding him…? He takes that shit to heart, and I think I’m really fucking up here.”

“Oh, that’s tricky,” Courtney taps her thigh and pulls her mouth into a tight line. It’s not unkind, just contemplative. “And I’m guessing he doesn’t know that you’re having these issues at the moment?”

“Yeah, I haven’t told him about what happened yet. But it’s like… How do I tell him that sometimes I do shit I don’t really super want to do just because _he_ wants to do it?” 

Sure, you haven’t had sex with him when you didn’t want to. Yet. But you’re so scared of your inability to say no. You’re so scared of your own desire to please. “It’s like… I’m trapped in a fucking cage. And I hate feeling these things about the guy I like, because he’s such a good guy, I just want to make him happy, not demonize his touch to my body.”

Courtney pauses for a few moments, likely trying to think of the best course to take with you. Eventually, she nods to herself and looks up. “I know we keep going back to the concept of how actions can affect others, but I think it’d be helpful to consider in this situation too. How do you currently view sex—or any form of physical intimacy—with Karkat?”

“I think…” You have to really consider that. At the beginning of your relationship, it was easier to have sex with Karkat. Before you dug all this shit up, it was easy to perform and also enjoy it. Because while you don’t _hate_ sex, it’s not really something you feel comfortable doing with the people you’re close to. 

Closeness is scary. You guess that’s what it comes down to.

“I don’t know how I view intimacy right now. It’s just scary. The closer I get to Karkat, the closer I feel to the parts of myself that I think are ugly. So it’s easier to just shut it off. But then it’s like… I’m frozen and stuck and I don’t trust myself to say no. Because I just sit there and take whatever touching I’m given until it’s over. And I know that’s not healthy but I don’t know, I don’t know, my voice gets trapped somewhere. I can’t voice anything, it doesn’t feel right to.”

“That’s a very common trauma response, Dave. You know, there’s more than just ‘fight’ and ‘flight’ as far as reactions go. ‘Freeze’ is also a response a lot of people have, especially if they were unable to express themselves or escape from abuse.”

Yeah. That sounds about right. When you think of it like that, you guess it makes a lot of sense; Bro’s whole _thing_ was that he wanted you to push through uncomfortable situations. Or more accurately, he wanted you to sit there and roll with the punches.

But there are no punches now. And you’re still stuck in this spot, incapable of accepting that you don’t have to roll with shit now, because no one is waiting to punish you if you don’t.

Courtney keeps speaking. “We do need to figure out a way for you to safely express your needs, though. I can’t imagine that you’d enjoy feeling powerless with your boyfriend, and I can’t imagine he’d feel all too great about it either.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to have sex with him when I don’t want to.” You’re so afraid of being a monster, or turning Karkat into one in your own head, it makes you sick. “I want to tell him, eventually. I know I have to communicate with him, I’m just not ready yet.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. But I do agree that we need a way to keep you from having sex when you don’t want to. Let’s start with this: what sort of intimacy has been making you feel trapped lately?”

“Well, he was at my house a while back and we kissed a bit. I freaked out because I guess I was getting a flashback halfway through, then made an excuse and said I was sick. When he stopped kissing me, I thought I’d be fine, but then he started rubbing my shoulder, and even that felt like too much.” You take a deep breath. “Sometimes he does normal things like hold my hand or lean into me and it just sets me off. My stomach knots up but it’s like all I can do is sit there and take it until he notices I’m uncomfortable and backs off.”

Courtney hums. “And what do you think would happen if you were able to ask him to take his hand off you, or lean away for a while?”

That’s where things get complicated. “I know he’d back off, but I can’t help but feel like he’d take it the wrong way. Like, Karkat’s a sensitive guy. He’d probably take it personally or think it was something he did, or something.”

“I don’t think you’re giving Karkat enough credit. From what I’ve heard, he sounds like he wants what's best for you. Do you think it’s possible that he’d accept that sometimes, you just need to not be touched?”

You guess. But there’s still that nagging need to be good for other people, especially for people as important as Karkat. “I mean… I don’t know. I don’t want to be an asshole.”

Courtney raises her eyebrow at you and you groan.

“Okay, fine, having boundaries isn’t being an asshole, but still.”

“Let’s go back to what sex is, real quick. Actually, back to what intimacy is as a whole.” Courtney makes a sweeping gesture with her arms. “It’s a huge spectrum, right? What do you think intimacy is, at its most basic level?”

You don’t know, but you make a guess. “A way to feel close to other people?”

“That’s part of it, yes. But other than for feeling close to others, I’d argue that intimacy is a way to care for others _and_ to receive the care we need as animals. When intimacy isn’t making you feel good, it isn’t fulfilling its purpose. And this goes both ways.”

“So it goes back to the whole ‘people feel good by making you feel good’ thing?”

“Exactly. Intimacy is just another way your partner takes care of you. A loop of care that feeds into you and goes back to him. When it’s functioning as it should, at least.”

You get where she’s going with this. “So if I don’t let him care for me the way _I_ need it, I’m not giving myself what would help me. Or even giving him what he needs, either. Because I’m like, blocking the flow of the weird, love energy or whatever?”

“That’s a way to put it, yes.” Courtney uncrosses her legs. “Do you feel that’s the case for you, right now?”

You think on it. It would make sense at least, if that was a part of it. You don’t communicate what you need to Karkat, so he’s not able to love you in the way that makes you feel safe all the time. When he isn’t able to love you how you need, it creates a rift in your mind. And if you aren’t getting the love you need, how you need it, how can you ever make Karkat feel loved the way he needs to be, either?

“Yeah.” Your voice comes out little more than a croak. Fuck, it hurts knowing that you’re not only hurting yourself, but the guy you’d do anything for. Maybe that’s the problem. You’d do anything for him, but what are you doing for yourself?

“Before you’re ready to talk to him about how you’re feeling, there are some ways you can try to re-establish boundaries. Next time you’re together, remember that what Karkat wants is to take care of you. Do you think that’s an accurate statement?”

You nod, not trusting yourself to speak. 

“So, if he has his hand on your shoulder and you need a break, what do you think would happen if you said: ‘hey, Karkat, would you take your hand off me if I asked?’ Do you think he’d listen? Do you think he’d want you to feel as comfortable and _loved_ as possible?”

Again, you nod. Gee, your throat sure does feel a little tight. 

“If you’re able to, I’d ask him. We’re almost out of time, but I think next week, we can touch more on how to create those boundaries again. Does that sound good to you?” 

Nod. You need some time to think about this all. You try to find your voice again. “I… Yeah, sounds good. I guess I’m just worried about telling him about the. The abuse. But I guess D didn’t react badly, so…” 

“The anxiety and anticipation can be terrible. In the meantime, until you’re ready, I’d like you to remind yourself that you have the power to create change in your life. You told D after all, and that was all you! So keep that in mind, and try to express your boundaries, or ask Karkat how he feels about them. You don’t have to do it all at once, but we do want to make sure you won’t put yourself in a position where you disregard your own consent.”

“Yeah I’ll think about it. I don’t want to do that to him. I really, really don’t.”

“Remember, it’s unfair to do to _yourself_ too. You’re in a different position, now. You have that power.”

It feels like she’s giving you way too much credit. But with how much she grills you, you trust Courtney to tell it to you like it is. So she must believe what she’s saying, at least a little bit. You wrap up the session and try to consider everything she said. Consent is a wily, wily beast, one you’re still weirdly unaccustomed to. 

It gives you something to think about on the ride home, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading again, the support for this fic flatters me so much :-)!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew okay, im back! i had a pretty wild week but im excited to get back into writing again. and ive had some time to think about where i want to take this story. so far, the plan is to wrap it up before (hopefully) mid august, when my classes start back up again. ill be too busy w/ uni so i want to wrap this up so i can go back to writing one shots (thatre low commitment so i dont abandon any of them due to stress! yay!) 
> 
> so idk how much longer im going to make this, maybe... 3 or 4 more chapters? im not sure, sometimes this fic gets away from me and i end up writing more than i planned lol
> 
> another note! i changed the christmas mentions in a past chapter to Hanukkah. i forgot how much i love jewish strilondes, so i switched that. still not sure if ill include that bit of the plot in THIS story, it may be a one shot down the road, but we'll see! sorry for the long chapter note, just wanted to put that all out there

As the weeks go by, things stay stagnant for the most part. You and Karkat see each other a few times, and that brings up a whole slew of complicated emotions that you can’t even begin to sort out. You try, in therapy at least, but you don’t know if you’re getting anywhere with yourself.

You think you might l-word Karkat, full stop. When you're not freaking out, thinking about him makes you feel like you belong somewhere. Even though you don’t get butterflies when you think of him anymore, you know he's incredibly special to you. And all that romcom-butterflies-forever stuff is bullshit anyway. 

On the other hand, part of you worries that you’re just not cut out for relationships. Who has _this_ much difficulty opening up? Who worries so much about—about their own motivations? Who feels this afraid of being in l-word with their boyfriend? You have no trouble saying that you love your family, why is it so different with Karkat?

Despite how much you care about him, sometimes you feel sick at the thought of being near Karkat. And that’s not his fault, it’s yours. So you wish your mind would stop dragging your dumb issues into your relationship and make up its damn mind. Do you l*ve Karkat or not? You think that you do. At least, underneath all your issues, you do. You may just be too afraid to admit it.

You and Karkat are sitting on your bed with the window open to let fresh air in. You’re not really talking, just sitting with each other in comfortable silence. Karkat’s on his phone and you’re on yours, watching a Zoolander essay video on Youtube. 

For a while, everything feels fine. Then, it doesn’t, and you go still trying to contain the anxious energy building up inside of you. 

What did Courtney tell you? To remember that you have power in these situations? 

You know rationally that it’s true, that she’s right, but there’s still that underlying fear that you’ll disappoint Karkat, or worse, hurt him. But then you remember what else she told you those weeks ago. 

Something about not treating Karkat like he’s delicate or acting like you need to micromanage his emotions. What _would_ he say if you just asked him to stop touching you?

“You’re all scrunchy.” Karkat points out, probably referring to the face you’re making. He’s affectionately called it your ‘constipation face’ at times too, which you suppose is equally accurate. 

“Am I?”

“Yeah. You good?”

“Yeah.” 

You’re probably _obviously_ not okay. It’s always been obvious to anyone who’s ever looked at you. That’s why Bro gave you such a hard time after all, right? For as much as you get stuck behind masks, you're notoriously bad at hiding yourself properly. 

Karkat doesn’t buy it. He notices how tense you are and chews his lip for a moment before taking his arm away from your hip. It feels like in that moment, your body loosens. See, you’re not fooling him. Not in the slightest. 

“Dave.”

He sounds so serious that you become tense again almost immediately. You’re really not in the mood to talk about feelings, or whatever. You grunt, a signal for him to ask you what’s on his mind. You even pause the Zoolander analysis video even though you haven’t been able to absorb any of it for the past 10 minutes and 25 seconds.

“Babe, look at me.”

And damn, he’s pulling out the babe for this one. That one gets you. But also makes your chest all screwy, and not in a good way. It’s like he’s hammering nails into your heart, and you don’t know why it hurts so much to hear. You look at him and hope you can get this over with as quickly as possible, even though that’s shitty to think in so many ways you can’t even begin to comprehend. 

“What’s wrong? And don’t tell me it’s nothing, because it’s obviously something. Look, if you don’t want me here, you can just tell me you want me to leave. I won’t be pissed at you or anything.”

Of course Karkat assumes that he’s the issue here, not you. He doesn’t get it and he can’t, he can’t get it because you don’t know how to spit this shit out. 

“Dude, no, that’s not it at all. Look, you know I have issues with like...” Saying it out loud to Karkat of all people makes you feel low in ways you didn’t know you could feel low before. “You know… Saying things. I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with me but it’s just a lot. I don’t know.”

Karkat keeps biting his lip, watching you with a fondness that you are far from deserving of. “Stop pushing yourself so hard. I know you can’t get it through your thick skull, but you’re a pretty great guy under all the bullshit. So stop being so hard on yourself.”

You huff out a humorless laugh. “I wish it was that easy. Sorry.”

Karkat doesn’t reprimand you for apologizing, but you can tell he wishes he could tell you to stop that. Karkat sure hates seeing other people feel guilty, even though you're pretty sure he's the king of feeling guilty for literally everything to ever happen in the history of all time. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

There goes your throat again. It's closing up. Making you feel trapped in this scary place of safety. You nod to make sure Karkat knows that you get it, but you both drop the conversation.

Karkat doesn’t touch you after that, not until he leaves and kisses you on the cheek. You get the feeling that you made a mistake somewhere along the way and resign yourself to lying in bed alone all of the next day, too angry with yourself to interact with anyone else you might fuck up with.

And hey, you know what else would spice up your episode of self-hatred? Reminding yourself that you’re a grimy, inherently disgusting, flawed human being!

Okay. That might be stretching it a little too far into Dirk territory.

But speak of the devil and he shall—

TT: Hey. 

TT: I know this is a few weeks too late, but I wanted to talk to you about something I heard you and D talk about. 

TG: uh 

TG: what did you hear 

TT: First you need to promise me that you won’t freak out. 

TG: ok dirk heres a tip 

TG: if you want me to not freak out 

TG: dont tell me to promise to not freak out 

TG: thats like the fastest way to get me to flip my lid 

TG: and its a little too late for that youre being too cryptic for me to not feel like somethings up 

TG: why are you not responding dude this is a real inopportune time to ignore my messages because idk what the fucks up and you know thats the fastest way to lose me dude consider me lost 

TT: Sorry. 

TT: I thought maybe easing into it would be easiest on you, but I think I’ve already screwed this up 

TT: So maybe I should be more upfront. 

TG: please 

TG: be upfront man no more of this vague shit 

TG: what did you hear me and d talking about 

TT: I heard all about the uh. 

TT: I feel gross even saying it but 

TT: The Bro thing. With the videos. Or your worry that he put them online somewhere. 

TG: oh you heard that 

TT: I swear I didn’t mean to. I even tried to block what I heard out, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

TG: ah 

TT: Dave are you doing alright? 

TG: yeah just uh 

TG: i dont know if i wanted you to know that 

TG: i dont even like knowing it 

TT: I’m only bringing it up because I thought we could solve the problem together 

TG: what 

TG: if youre suggesting we search the internet for the porn im in online i want you to stop right there ok 

TG: i dont want anyone ever fucking seeing that 

TT: Not us. Hal. 

TT: He can scan the internet fairly easily. Getting to every porn site may take a few days, but I can set him up with a face-recognition algorithm that might help. 

TG: so no one would see it but hal 

TT: Yeah. And even then, if he finds it, he can just wipe it out. He won’t watch. 

TT: I’ll make sure of it. 

TG: i 

TG: i dont know 

TT: Are you freaking out right now? 

TG: i never wanted you to know 

TT: I’ll take that as a yes. 

TT: Look, bro 

TT: I know you worry a lot about how other people see you and how people see you in relation to what Bro did to you 

TT: And you obsess over it. 

TT: I get it, you’re talking to the king of obsessing 

TG: yeah hah 

TT: I’m not going to judge you, if that’s what you’re worried about. 

TG: i dont know what im worried about at this point 

TG: its just a whole lot i guess 

TG: just go ahead and make hal scan everything i guess 

TG: i want all this to be over with 

TT: Cool. I’ll set him up with the algorithm and we’ll get everything sorted out. 

TT: Sorry if I butted in where I'm not welcome, you know how I can be sometimes. 

TG: yeah but i know it comes from a place of caring and shit 

TG: so its okay 

TG: i gotta go have a mini freak out in private 

TT: Understood 

TT: Love ya 

TG: love you too

The moment you disconnect from Dirk, you set your phone aside and stare at your hands. That empty feeling is back in full-force and you try your best to not let it consume you. Even just letting Dirk mess around with this feels like too much—more than that, you guess it’s admitting to yourself yet again that things aren’t over yet and might not _ever_ be. You can't even grasp the entire scope of what was done to you. How can you hope to get over it in your lifetime?

You don’t think Bro would ever post those things. You hope. But that may also be the little Dave in your head that feels the need to protect him, even after all these years.

Maybe you shouldn’t be thinking about this right now. Hal will sort things out and that will be that.

You switch tabs over to see that there’s a memo you haven’t caught up with yet. A perfect distraction. Hopefully.

TT: Alright, I’ve got mother on board with our Hanukkah plans. 

TG: and im ready 2 go all out 

TG: balls DEEP 

TG: absolutely entrench myself in our merrymaking + good times 

TT: And does D know that you’re all planning on dragging him to New York? 

TT: You know how he gets when it comes to these things. 

TG: yea yea hes a big ol busybody and dont let himself take vacations for nothin 

TG: weve got it under control 

TG: ;) 

TT: For some reason I’m not totally convinced, Roxy.

You feel a bit weird interacting with Dirk so soon after your conversation about Bro, but you guess it’s fine. Dirk won’t be weird about it in front of the rest of your family. You may even (gasp) hop in the conversation.

TG: oh come on d cant be THAT hrd to wrangle! 

TG: *wrangle wrangle wrangle* (thts me wranglin him) 

TT: You would be surprised. 

TG: d has been putting in a lot of effort recently dirk idk 

TG: i think he wont be that hard to convince 

TT: Dave’s right, D seems pretty amicable, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be up for it. 

TT: Whatever. 

TT: When do you plan on having us fly up there 

TG: we be thinkin maybe around the 20th so we can chill a few days before starting ye old festivities 

TT: Sounds good to me.

You watch them solidify dates from far, far away. You know that you’re dissociating and that Courtney would probably tell you to ground yourself, so you do your best, even though it doesn’t completely fix how much all of this is fucking you over.

Sick at the idea of Hal finding _anything_ that Bro made you do, you get up and resolve to mix some music to distract yourself. 

Even that doesn’t work to pull you out of the fog you’ve found yourself trapped in. Huh. After numbly fiddling with your mixing equipment and computer software, you give up and lean back in your desk chair to stare at the ceiling. 

In another universe, maybe you’d be fine by now. 

In another universe, maybe Bro wouldn’t have done any of that shit to you in the first place. Him and Dirk _are_ really similar, after all, yet you know that Dirk would never think of hitting you or scaring the shit out of you or anything else Bro thought was fair to dish out. 

You just get the distinct impression that you’re wasting your life away. 20 years, and for what? You’ve spent all that time stuck in this rut, or whatever it is. Can you call it a rut if your entire personality is just rooted in boatloads of dramatic, excessive trauma? 

It’s hard to not see yourself as a lost cause, is all. If you’ve always been like this, what’s to say that you’re even capable of change? Should you even try? It might just be easier to let yourself slip away. 

You’re ripped from your passive suicidal ideation by another incoming message. Damn, you’re popular today. So much for not talking to anyone today.

CG: HEY 

CG: I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE WERE COOL 

CG: I FEEL LIKE I PUSHED YOU YESTERDAY LIKE A TOTAL ASSWIPE AND I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT I DIDN’T CROSS ANY BOUNDARIES. 

CG: IF I DID, FEEL FREE TO TELL ME RIGHT TO MY FACE 

CG: SAY “KARKAT, YOU HUGE UNBELIEVABLE HUMAN COCK, STAY IN YOUR FUCKING LANE OR ELSE.” 

CG: YOU’RE TOO NICE TO SAY IT LIKE THAT BUT YOU GET THE IDEA. 

CG: I’D RATHER GOUGE MY EYES OUT WITH TOOTHPICKS THAN EVEN FOR A FUCKING SECOND MAKE YOU THINK THAT I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU. OR HOW MY ACTIONS AFFECT YOU, EVEN IF I'M NOT COGNIZANT OF HOW THEY AFFECT YOU. BECAUSE I'M A HUGE BITCHBABY IDIOT.

Of course, Karkat wants to blame himself yet again. A part of you feels annoyed at him even though you know the only one you’re mad at here is yourself. It’s your fault that you’re physically incapable of getting close to him without having to cop out one way or another.

He shouldn’t feel like he’s walking on eggshells around you, and something about his endless kindness makes you... angry? So irrationally angry that you have to set your phone down again to make sure you don't blow up at him.

Think through it, you tell yourself. This is just another one of those Bro things. You take a deep breath and try not to fucking snap at Karkat even though you obviously don’t want him to feel bad about any of this.

It’s your fault. It’s all on you. And you’ve come to terms with the fact that Karkat somehow still wants to be with you despite that, and you don’t think he'll be changing his mind anytime soon (for some reason). So you have to stamp down that angry, hyper-fucking-masculine part of yourself that wants to destroy everything good in your life once and for all.

That’d just hurt Karkat. His concern is innocent and it’s not as gross as your brain is making it out to be.

Deep breaths.

Once you trust yourself not to punch or throw anything like a privileged little brat, you grab your phone and read up on the rest of Karkat’s self-hatred rant. He really takes things too personally sometimes, and you think you might have to talk to him about that at some point.

You’re not one to talk, but it kind of makes having your own emotions hard sometimes when they’re constantly attached to Karkat’s self-blame. You two sure do have your fair share of hang-ups, but you think you make them work.

CG: FUCK, I’M SORRY. 

CG: I THINK I’M FUCKING IT UP EVEN MORE BY BRINGING IT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE, AREN’T I??? 

CG: I SHOULD’VE JUST LET IT GO OR SOMETHING BUT I JUST WORRY A LOT AND GET STUCK INSIDE MY OWN HEAD AND TRYING TO GET THINGS WORKED OUT IN MY THINKPAN IS LIKE PULLING TEETH. 

CG: I SHOULD SHUT UP NOW. IF YOU WANT TO IGNORE ALL THIS FEEL FREE 

CG: I’M MAKING A HUGE GIANT, FAT ASS OUT OF MYSELF HERE. 

TG: aww karkat you know i love your ass dont act like thats a bad thing 

TG: stop typing btw 

TG: i can feel you apologizing more and i need you to stop right there 

TG: if anything i should be apologizing 

TG: but if we get into this well just be going back and forth trying to claim responsibility for everything and that’s just a whole mess 

TG: so lets not do that ok 

CG: MRRRRRRRRRRRRHHH. FINE. 

TG: cool 

TG: were so cool karkat dont even worry about it 

TG: i wish i could talk to you and shit 

TG: you know like a normal human being 

TG: but you know how it is 

CG: YEAH. I GUESS I DO. 

CG: JUST… *DID* I CROSS A LINE YESTERDAY? YOU’VE BEEN SO DISTANT I JUST FEEL LIKE… 

CG: FUCK I DON’T KNOW. 

CG: I HOPE THIS DOESN’T COME OFF AS ME BLAMING YOU FOR ANY OF THIS BY THE WAY, YOU CAN’T CONTROL SHIT. 

CG: I’M JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO 

TG: see man you shouldnt have to guess 

TG: or read me like a book youve memorized every word of 

TG: i should be able to communicate my needs and all that funky stuff 

TG: when you left yesterday i felt like i screwed something up by going ghost on you 

TG: i know how much it freaks you out when i go all robo dave but i just wish i could fucking 

TG: explain to you 

TG: with words 

TG: but they never come out right 

TG: and im still working through the many onion layers of my emotional repression u kno 

CG: YEAH… 

CG: AGAIN, I DON’T BLAME YOU FOR ANY OF THIS OKAY?? 

CG: WE JUST NEED TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP BEING SO DUMB WITH EACH OTHER. 

CG: AND STOP ASSUMING THAT WE EACH DID THE WRONG THING WHEN WE’RE BOTH SEEING OUR RELATIONSHIP THROUGH DIFFERENT LENSES. 

TG: ughh yeah 

TG: its just been 

TG: a lot 

TG: i have stuff i want to tell you but its 

TG: im working through it okay 

TG: youre the bomb dot com though karkat dont you ever go thinking that youre not 

CG: I DON’T KNOW, I FEEL LIKE I’VE BEEN SCREWING UP A LOT WITH READING YOU LATELY. 

TG: bro you cant read my mind 

TG: thats not on you 

TG: i feel like ive been screwing up a lot lately too alright lets just take it one screw up at a time and agree to disagree on whos responsibility it really is 

TG: or even better we can split custody of the screwups like were divorced parents with kids 

TG: ok bad comparison scratch that no divorce simile up in here 

CG: PFFFT DAVE I FUCKING HATE HOW ADORABLE YOU ARE EVEN WHEN YOU’RE COMPARING US TO DIVORCED PARENTS.

You pause your typing and stare at what Karkat said about you with a sort of... Disgust. Not at Karkat of course. Just like the anger, it feels so irrational that it triggers frustration towards yourself for even feeling it in the first place.

Push that thought away. You’re very glad your boyfriend thinks you’re adorable, even though it makes you kind of uncomfortable.

TG: har har 

TG: my alien bf absolutely pwning me with compliments 

CG: CUTE BLOND: DESTROYED BY FACTS AND LOGIC 

TG: ew haha dont go ben shapiro on me please 

TG: uhh but yeah youre pretty adorable yourself 

CG: I HATE YOU I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT 

TG: oh id never forget that no sir never 

TG: your quadrant confusion aside i just wanted to uh try to be more open i guess 

TG: itll take time to figure out but im just 

TG: grateful that youre sticking by me i guess 

TG: i wouldnt be able to do it by myself 

CG: OKAY FIRST OFF, WE’VE BEEN OVER THE QUADRANT THING MANY MANY TIMES YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKER. I DON’T ADHERE TO THAT SHIT ANYMORE. 

CG: AND DON’T SELL YOURSELF SO SHORT. YOU’RE PLENTY CAPABLE OF DRAGGING YOURSELF AROUND, AND IN FACT, YOU PRETTY MUCH HAVE BEEN DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF ANYWAY, YOU STUBBORN DICK. 

CG: MY ROLE IN HELPING YOU OUT HAS BEEN PRETTY SMALL, AND PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING YOU’VE BEEN ABLE TO ACHIEVE? THAT’S BEEN YOU. 

CG: BUT UM… THANK YOU 

CG: I CARE ABOUT YOU A LOT, DAVE. IT MEANS MORE THAN YOU’D EVER KNOW THAT YOU LET ME IN LIKE THIS AT ALL.

Your chest tightens up at that and you worry your lip, that discomfort creeping back in on you at the genuineness of this conversation. But nothing’s happening. The world isn’t ending. You’re fine. Karkat means what he says, and that has to count for something, right?

You’re about to type out a reply when you get another notification. It’s from Dirk, and you completely freeze up, remembering what he’s sending Hal to look for.

TT: I’ve set everything up. 

TT: You still cool with this? We don’t have to if you don’t want to. 

TT: Just say the word and I’ll tell Hal to drop it.

The anxiety creeps back up, swiftly taking control of you like it's nothing. It's a familiar weight that reminds you of where you came from, what you were born into, and what you’ve yet to escape.

If you don’t find the truth out, you don’t think you’ll ever be able to escape that uncertainty. You’ll always have the threat of exposure hanging over you, waiting to strike you down. Waiting to rip everything out from underneath you.

As much as you don’t want to know, as much as you want to bury your head in the sand, as much as you want to let life whisk you away like a strong breeze carrying a feather away, you know what you need to do.

TG: you wont look if you find anything? 

TT: I won’t. 

TG: promise me 

TG: i know youre not fucking around but please 

TG: i just need to hear it 

TG: if you find anything just nuke it straight out of existence dont peek dont even so much as glance at a shitty jpeg thumbnail 

TT: You have my word. 

TT: Hopefully we won’t find anything in the first place. 

TG: yeah hopefully

But you have a feeling that there is something out there. And you don’t know how to cope with that. You guess you’ll cross that bridge when you get there. For now, you'll shove that fear deep, deep down and pretend it doesn't exist for a while.

TG: go for it 

TG: before i change my mind 

TT: You’re sure? 

TG: give hal the green light 

TG: i need to go 

TT: Of course 

TT: If you need anything, you know where to find me bro 

TG: yeah 

TG: bye

You drop your phone and let it clatter to the floor. You know Karkat’s messaging you more, but you can’t bear to talk to anyone else right now. You're in too many places at once, feeling too many memories lingering at the edges of your mind, all waiting to pounce on you the moment you're vulnerable. There’s only one thing you want to do right now. Only one thing you _can_ do.

You bury your face in your hands, bring your knees up to your chest, and cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, lemme know what you think!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was planning on waiting till tomorrow to post this chapter, but i cranked out the NEXT one already so i was like ah whatever guess ill post it now haha. 
> 
> this got long fast. It was initially one giant chapter of like 6-7k ish but i was like ehhh 4k for this chapter is enough

“Hey. Can I talk to you about something?”

D jolts where he’s sitting. Oh. You must’ve startled him, not realizing how quietly you came into the room or something. You shift from foot to foot uncomfortably and study him for any sign, any sign at all, that he doesn’t want to talk to you. But he seems glad to see you out of your room and waves you over.

“Of course, what’s up?”

Duh, he’d have no problem with it. He’s been nothing but supportive, and you think that’s finally sticking, at least a little bit. D is safe, and that’s that on that. That’s why you’re even bothering to come to him with this stuff in the first place, isn't it? Because you trust him not to think it's stupid?

You shuffle around the back of the couch and come to sit beside him, fiddling with your hands for a moment before speaking. This is something you’ve been thinking about for a few days. Or at least since you talked to Karkat last, if not before.

“So, um. It’s about Karkat.”

D seems to get a little more concerned as you say that and visibly leans in toward you. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say quickly, not wanting him to get the wrong idea. The growing hardness in his eyes makes you think that maybe he's assuming the worst, and you really don’t want that. Karkat would never do anything to you, at least not on purpose. 

This is all you. All stuff you really have to work through yourself.

So you try to explain to the best of your ability and start there. “I guess it’s just hard for me to sort through all my janky emotions after living with Bro my whole life? There’s a lot that feels kind of, uh... Mixed up.”

“Like what?” D asks, gently prodding you when you go silent. You weren’t joking when you said it was hard to sort through, it’s almost impossible to narrow everything down into One Thing you can point to and say ‘this! this is it!’ because shit ain’t that simple. 

It never is. 

“Well, obviously I care about him a lot,” you say, slipping off your shades to tuck them in the front of your shirt. It’s the least you can do to open yourself up to D, you think. You don't want to hide from him when you're practically begging for his input. “But it’s like… I don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff I’m anxious about even when it’s innocent. Like Karkat can tell me something totally innocuous like ‘dude, I think you’re cute’ and I just feel… Gross. Or angry, except it isn't real anger. But it’s like, the emotions aren’t mine…? Yet they are? Fuck, I’m not explaining this well am I.”

You scratch the back of your neck. “I know it’s a Bro thing, one of those ‘I’m not used to this therefore it’s scary’ things. But I hate feeling like I’m harboring some secret resentment towards my totally rad boyfriend when it’s not like I _really_ feel that way about him at all, you know?”

D nods, his face scrunched up as he speaks. Carefully. He’s trying to get this right, too. “Bro was pretty homophobic, wasn’t he?” You nod. Even though he was gay, the dude was pretty vicious about that sort of stuff. To this day, you don't really get it. “I’m no shrink, but do you think that could be a part of it? Like the whole disgust thing?”

“I mean yeah, probably. I know a lot of my emotions are still pretty dependent on what he’d think of them, so maybe. I hate all this internalized garbage, it just fucking sucks. And I'm sick of it.”

“It sounds like it does suck,” D says, holding an arm so you can lean into him, which you promptly do. “But Karkat doesn’t blame you for any of this. Right? That has to count for something. This stuff takes time.”

“Yeah, he’s too nice to ever blame me for any of my bs I guess.”

“Maybe it’s less about him being nice and more about him thinking you deserve it, kid.”

D might have a point there, however unwilling you are to accept it. It goes back to what Courtney said before about intimacy. Something about how it’s not working if it doesn’t make you feel good. Or safe. Karkat wants to make you feel good and safe. You want to make Karkat feel good and safe. And even if Bro is rolling over in his grave or wherever he is because you’re a huge pussy, that doesn’t change how you feel and it never will.

As crappy as it is to feel like this, you can’t just throw out how your body is reacting to all this shit. It's a disservice to Karkat. It's a disservice to _yourself._

“Yeah, I know that he thinks I deserve it. It’s just hard to think that I deserve him thinking I deserve it. You know?” 

You should sit with it. Observe the disgust that coils up. Watch it leave. Don’t judge yourself. Karkat wouldn’t.

D rubs your arm from where his is wrapped around your shoulders. A part of you can't believe that you get this support, and for nothing in return! You're really, really fucking lucky. “Dave, you’re a phenomenal kid and an even better man. If anyone can overcome this, it’s you. And you have a whole gang of losers who know that you’re great, too, so just take your time. We’ll all be waiting for you to catch up with us in seeing how sick you are.”

You can’t help but snort at that, but you’re smiling anyway. It’s hard to accept his compliments, but you try to remember that they're just a reflection of how he sees you, and it’d be pretty douchey to argue with him about that.

“Thanks, man. Shit’s complicated.” 

“Very.”

You sit in silence for a few minutes. D has his manuscript notes spread out on the table in front of him, and you have to remind yourself that you’re not burdening him by sitting with him.

Everything's fine. You still exist. No one's hurting you and no one's planning to.

Suddenly, you’re overcome with gratitude for everything D’s done for you these past few years and it takes some conscious effort to keep from crying. You turn in place and wrap your arms around his middle, hugging him like a small child. That’s all you are. A small, lost child, trying to figure your shit out. You have a lot of catching up to do, but you can start here with the one adult in the world you trust more than anyone else.

“D…”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For everything.” You’re taken aback by just how genuine and raw you sound, and by the sound of D’s bashful laugh, you can tell he’s a bit uncomfortable with the praise, too.

“You give me too much credit, dude.”

You squeeze your arms around him even tighter and hide your face in his shirt. “Nope. Perfect amount of credit. Trust me on this one, two way street remember? You’re not allowed to dole out love then pull out when I swing back.”

D wraps his arms around you fully and squeezes back, almost violently rocking you side to side. “Ughhh how’d I get such perfect fucking kids. I swear, I’m so lucky.”

You laugh and jokingly struggle in his hold. “Ew gross okay let me go, I’m done, this is getting too sappy.”

He releases you from his arms and you sit back on the couch, barely leaning into him but still appreciating the grounding contact. “Uh yeah, I guess I just needed to talk about it. The Karkat thing has been bothering me for a while. So thanks for hearing me out.”

“No worries, dude. Your heart knows what you really want underneath all the Bro crap, so listen to that, as dumb and cheesy as it sounds. And remember, don’t push yourself. You don’t need to get better all at once.”

It feels like you should get better all at once, though. You don’t say that out loud, but the thought persists even as you say goodnight and head back to your room. 

You spend the rest of the night catching up on your course-load while absentmindedly chatting with your friends. You’re still waiting for Dirk’s update on the porn search thing, so distracting yourself is the best bet you've got to keep the impending meltdown at bay. 

The more you think about it, the more convinced you become that there’s... Something out there. There’s no way Bro would have done that shit to you if he didn’t have plans for it, right? He could’ve sold it, or worse, just given it to his friends to trade around, just to fuck with you. Not knowing is quite literally killing you, and your stomach won't stop fucking hurting over it. 

Maybe he figured this would have a long-lasting effect on you. And he figured right, because this is so many layers of fucked up that you can’t even begin to sort it all out.

Still, you do your best to distract yourself in the meantime. 

It doesn’t work very well, but you tell yourself otherwise, ever the expert in the fine art of self-deception.

-

TG: lately all weve been talking about has been like 

TG: our emotions 

TG: which is great and all but why dont we go do something fun 

TG: like a date 

TG: yeah lets go on a motherfucking date 

CG: YEAH, AS MUCH AS I ENJOY SPILLING MY TENDER, SENSITIVE GUTS TO YOU, A DATE SOUNDS LIKE A NICE CHANGE OF PACE. IN BETWEEN ALL OUR WONDERFUL, HEALTHY COMMUNICATION THAT IS (THIS ISN’T SARCASM BY THE WAY. I DO ENJOY IT VERY MUCH.) 

CG: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? 

TG: healthy communication i agree that shit is so epic 

TG: almost as epic as 

TG: spins the epicness wheel 

TG: the game spinner arrow thing idk what its called glides straight over fortnite and lands smack dab on minecraft 

TG: healthy communication is a solid minecraft on the epicness scale you heard it here first 

TG: the crowd goes wild 

TG: minecraft minecraft minecraft 

CG: ARE YOU DONE YET. 

TG: yes 

TG: wait actually haha no 

TG: karkat will you be my epic minecraft boyfriend who i on occasion talk to about my feelings 

CG: WE’RE ALREADY BOYFRIENDS YOU DOUCHE 

TG: no but i want you to be my MINECRAFT boyfriend 

TG: its very different 

TG: i wouldnt expect you to understand its a gamer thing 

CG: SIGH. YES, DAVE. I’LL BE YOUR MINECRAFT BOYFRIEND. YOU HAPPY? 

TG: can we go mining together with matching armor sets 

CG: HAVE I TOLD YOU JUST HOW MUCH I DESPISE YOU TODAY? 

CG: HERE I WAS ENJOYING MY AFTERNOON 

CG: THINKING ABOUT MY HANDSOME ASSHOLE BOYFRIEND 

CG: THINKING ABOUT WANTING TO HOLD HIS HAND AND GO ON A DATE OR SOMETHING I DON’T FUCKING KNOW 

CG: AND HE RUINS MY BRAIN'S FRAGILE ATTEMPT TO TURN HIM INTO A SEMI-DECENT PERSON THE MOMENT HE OPENS HIS MOUTH. 

CG: YOU SURE KNOW HOW TO SWEEP A TROLL OFF HIS FEET, STRIDER 

TG: yeah yeah weve been over this 

TG: im smooth as all hell and also pretty cute and funny etc etc 

TG: but karkat you see that was merely step one of my master plan to woo you 

CG: STEP ONE WAS TO ASK ME TO BE YOUR MINECRAFT BOYFRIEND. AND THEN COMPARE OUR EMOTIONAL CLOSENESS TO AN ARBITRARY LIST OF “IRONICALLY EPIC” CULTURAL REFERENCES YOU FIND FUNNY. 

CG: WHEN YOU KNOW HOW MAD THAT GAME MAKES ME IN PARTICULAR 

TG: it only makes you mad cuz you suck at it bro 

TG: kinda sad since its basically aimed at tiny babies who suck shit and eat ass and also have no brain cells 

TG: also 

TG: yes 

CG: CONSIDER ME IRREVOCABLY CHARMED, I GUESS. 

CG: WHAT’S STEP TWO. 

TG: step two is…. 

CG: DON’T SPIN THE EPICNESS WHEEL. I BEG OF YOU. I'M ON MY FUCKING KNEES HERE GROVELING. 

TG: ughhh fine 

TG: step two is getting to the damn point 

TG: let me take you out on a date 

TG: full shebang 

TG: nice dinner neither of us can really afford 

TG: candlelit 

TG: the rest is gonna be a surprise you dig 

CG: OKAY THAT SOUNDS A LOT BETTER (:B 

CG: WHEN WERE YOU THINKING…? 

TG: im glad you asked 

TG: were going full on stupid romance movie 

TG: wait wait wait 

TG: check out my line delivery are you ready? 

CG: ARE YOU SERIOUSLY NOT GOING TO TELL ME WHEN OUR DATE IS UNTIL I SAY I’M READY 

CG: FUCK I CAN’T STAND YOU! 

TG: im waiting 

CG: … OK, I’M READY. 

TG: tomorrow night 

TG: seven pm 

TG: ill pick you up babe 

CG: YOU CAN’T EVEN FUCKING **DRIVE**!!!!!! 

TG: duh but its the thought that counts 

TG: ill get d to drop me off so i can impress you with my gentlemanliness 

TG: then you drive 

TG: after i turn up the charm a lil bit that is 

CG: YOU’RE UNBELIEVABLE 

TG: i know you are but what am i 

CG: UGHHHHHH!!! 

CG: I HATE THAT YOU’RE MAKING ME SMILE RIGHT NOW 

TG: lol 

TG: youre so cute 

TG: ill see you tomorrow night then? 

CG: YEAH. YEAH, SOUNDS GOOD 

CG: MORE THAN GOOD. SOUNDS PERFECT 

CG: I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU. 

TG: get ready for maximum epicness babe 

TG: may just whip out my diamond sword if you dont stop bein so damn cute ;) 

CG: CONSIDER YOURSELF BLOCKED, REPORTED, AND DELETED.

Karkat disconnects from you and you can’t help but snort out a laugh. Ever since you told D about your complicated Karkat feelings, you’ve honestly felt… A bit better? Or maybe just less alone. Less like you're trapped in your own brain and more like you're a rational adult capable of seeing the big picture.

Besides, Needy Dave is making a reappearance, looking for any distraction that you can get while you wait for Hal to drop in and give you the verdict. You asked Dirk about it yesterday, because he’d told you it would only take a few days. It’s been four. But he said, in typically cagey-Strider fashion, that Hal wasn’t done. 

Something in his tone was more telling than you’d like to come to terms with. There’s a suggestion in how vague he was being, and you don’t like it, not one bit at all. 

So you set some stuff up to keep you busy. Isolating can only get you so far when you’re avoiding uncomfortable realizations, so you agreed to voice chat with John tonight, you have your date with Karkat tomorrow, then Courtney the day after…

You’re just hoping that you can hear back from Hal before then, just in case you need to talk yourself out of an impending meltdown in therapy. It’d be pretty sick if you could know by then so you can hash that shit out.

Your desktop is blowing up with notifications, so you pull your headphones out and assure John that you’re joining the VC. Just chill the fuck out for a few seconds, why don’t you.

You’ll worry about everything else as it comes along. Or… You’ll try to. You’re really trying to flex that ‘letting things happen as they happen without freaking out’ thing. Whether or not it’s working is up for debate, but you guess you’ll find out soon enough. 

You slip your headphones in. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here, dude, chill the fuck out.”

Worry about it later.

Worry about it later.

By the time you need to head out for Karkat’s the next next, the whole thing has (mostly) been forced from your mind. You’re dressed to the nines. Or maybe to the eight-and-a-halfs, if you’re feeling particularly humble.

D claps you on the shoulder. “Damn, dude, looking good!”

“Hey, I learned from the best.” Which isn’t a lie. D is pretty much a style _God_. Sure, most of what he wears is awful and ugly and downright criminal, but it’s a conscious stylistic choice, one you can only hope to match one day. The compliment gasses you up just the right amount to give you the rush of confidence you needed. “So it doesn’t look too douchey?”

“Oh, kid, the best part of dressing up is looking douchey.”

You nod, because damn, he’s right, how could you have forgotten something so important? 

“Come on, let’s get you to Karkat’s place, I’m sure he’s going to fuckin’ love it. If he doesn’t, he obviously doesn't have working eyes.” D starts up his car and shoots you a look from behind his shades, which you only catch because you’re looking at him from the side. “How’re things with him, anyway?”

“Karkat?”

“Yeah, since we talked about it and all.”

You think about it. “As good as they’re going to be. I care about him, that hasn’t changed. There’s just all this residual shit still, I guess.”

D bobs his head. Looks at you again as if you can’t tell he’s getting all mother-hen on you.

“Dude, it’ll be fine. Like you said, if anyone can get over it, it’s me.” You surprise yourself with that one and instantly clam up. Do you… Really believe that? Do you really believe that you can get over all this shit? 

You guess you do, deep down, otherwise you wouldn’t have said it. You guess you HAVE to believe it, somewhere deep down, otherwise you probably wouldn’t even be in therapy, huh?

Now that you think of it, you wouldn’t have done any of this shit if you didn’t believe, even deep down, that you deserve it, or can overcome it. You could have made Bro kill you over and over and over again if you didn’t want to live. You could’ve finished the job yourself and nothing was stopping you.

The realization leaves you feeling a little dizzy. The rest of the ride passes in comfortable silence, and you try to sit with your epiphany without trying to disassemble it and disprove it somehow. Or minimize it. 

Fuck.

D drops you off and you more or less stumble up to Karkat’s floor. You knock without really being present enough to realize that you’re doing it, and the door opens not even moments later.

God.

Karkat’s so handsome.

It snaps you back into yourself, seeing him like this. He’s got a dark red button up on, and it’s so slimming on him that you almost forget how uncomfortable you’ve been recently. His hair’s styled for once and you instantly want to run your fingers through it. Mess it up.

“You.” Your mouth goes dry, and you really do feel like one of the l-struck characters in one of Karkat’s shitty, stupid, dumb fucking movies standing here and ogling Karkat like he’s your date to prom. “You look good.”

Karkat blushes and looks away, down toward the ground. he scuffs his foot a bit on the floor and grumbles out a “you do too” before you lean over to cup his face with your hand. For a moment, you’re so sure of yourself, so comfortable, that you lean down and plant a kiss right on his lips.

Right after, the sureness dissipates and you’re left feeling like your stomach is trying to abscond right the fuck out of your body, so you lean back and shove your hands in your pockets as your face heats up.

“Wow, uh.” Karkat shoves his own hands in his pockets. You two really are hopeless at the best of times. “You weren’t kidding when you said you’d be turning up the charm. I didn’t know pricks could clean up so well.”

“Hah. Yeah well…” You trail off. God, it’s hot in here. You don’t know what else to say without sounding stupid. There’s a dick joke you could probably make right about now, but it doesn’t feel like the right time to shrug off his compliment. 

Why is being genuine outside of text so goddamn hard? 

“We should um… Get going. The reservation is in like thirty minutes.” 

Karkat blinks a few times and seems to snap out of whatever ogling of his own he seems to be doing. “Yeah, yes. Let me um, let me get my keys—” He then takes a few steps inside before he trips and falls flat on his face.

There’s a moment of silence before you both break out into a fit of giggles.

“God, we’re ridiculous,” you say, because the hopeless gay energy really is just too much for you to take. Karkat mumbles an agreement and you step inside to help him to his feet. 

His hands linger on your arm for a few seconds longer than necessary before drawing away.

“Let’s get going,” he says. “Text me the address.”

“Okay but before I tell you where we’re going, you have to promise me you’ll let me treat you tonight. Because I know you’re going to try and be difficult, but I want to treat you. Alright?”

Karkat grumbles something out to himself that you can’t make out, but it’s probably some sort of feeble argument against your epic, gentlemanly kindness.

“Bro, promise. I’m paying.”

“Ugh fine! I promise! Fucking send it, let’s get going.”

You send the address and Karkat nearly drops his keys. 

“No, no fucking way. This place is like… Nice.”

“Hence the dressing up thing, dude. Duh.”

“Noooo, no no no. This place is like _nice_. What the fuck, you asshole?”

Sensing Karkat's infamous I-can’t-accept-anything-from-anyone fit coming on, you guide him out of the apartment by the arm and pat him soothingly. “Dude, let me give you this, okay?”

“At least let me split the bill with you.”

“Nope, you promised.”

“But—” 

You pat him again and he lets out an aggravated sigh. “You’re literally impossible. Also, I’m going to get you back for this. Mark my fucking words.”

“Hah okay. Whatever dude, I’m just excited to spoil you tonight.”

Karkat grumbles again as you get into the car with him. The entire drive there is silent except for the sound of the radio quietly humming in the background. Looking over to Karkat, you take a moment to admire the lighting; the sun is just setting and he looks amazing in the orange of the sunset. Looking at him makes you feel safe. Content. It's sickening in the best of ways. You’re overcome with the urge to take photos of him, even though you haven’t really touched a camera in months. 

You’re broken out of your quiet admiration when you notice that Karkat's white-knuckling the steering wheel.

“You good?”

Karkat starts squirming in his seat. “Yeah.”

“Bullshit. What’s up?”

He scrunches up his eyebrows and seems to debate with himself for a few more seconds before he says, “This place is like… Really nice.”

“Yeah? Why’s it bothering you so much, money isn’t an issue right now, you know.”

“Urgghhh it’s not that,” he says, practically wringing the steering wheel underneath his hands. “It’s just…”

You wait as patiently as possible until he gets whatever he wants to say out. 

“It’s just… What if I embarrass you?”

“Wait, what?” Okay, he’s lost you. You feel like that came out of nowhere, and you really, really don't get it.

Karkat chews at his lip and refuses to look at you, hyper-focused on the road. “I don’t know, it’s stupid. I just… You’re so hot, and I’m objectively not. I just don’t want you to be embarrassed when we walk in there and everyone’s like ‘aw hell, a stud’ and then looks down to me and goes ‘ew, what the fuck is that’ you know?”

“Uh, no, I don’t.” You legitimately can’t believe what you’re hearing. “Dude, what the fuck. You’re literally the hottest guy on the planet. Do you not have eyes? Wait, scratch that, Terezi’s _blind_ and even she knows what a hunk you are! You're a bonafide, Grade-A Himbo, man. Karkat, what the fuck.”

Karkat scoffs. You can tell he doesn’t believe you by the way he refuses to look at you. He’s pretty bad at hiding how he feels, after all. 

“Karkat, I’m not even bagging on myself when I say this, but you’re ten times hotter than I could ever be. How many people have absolutely fallen in love with you because you’re just _that_ irresistible?” 

Karkat doesn’t respond, but you know you’re right here. 

For most of your life, you’ve gone relatively unnoticed, try as you might to draw people in and get them to love you. Karkat? You’re pretty sure the dude goes out of his way to hide away from the world, yet he’s practically a magnet, always attracting people into his life with just how good he is down to his very core. There's nothing to not like about him, except maybe his nasty morning breath, but even that manages to be cute because it's _Karkat's_ morning breath.

How does he not get that?

“You’re the entire package, I don’t think I could be embarrassed about you if I tried. Have you ever looked in a mirror? Fuck, your eyebrows? Your nose? That shit has me going hog-wild at practically every hour of the day. And don’t even get me started on your—”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Karkat sniffs and you’re instantly pulled out of your rant. Oh. 

“Babe, pull over for a sec."

“But our reservation—”

“We’ll make it. Pull over.”

He does as you say, and the moment you’re parked, you take off your seatbelt and lean over the center console to tug Karkat into a hug. His bottom lip is quivering, and he looks frustrated. Probably with himself.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and you shake your head. 

If this is how he feels when you apologize for shit that’s not your fault, you think you get how devastating it must be for him to see you rag on yourself. Because this fucking sucks. He can't see what you see, and there's nothing you can do to force him to come to terms with just how much you adore him. There's literally nothing you can say to force Karkat to realize just how great he is. You can't think of anyone on this planet who's more lovable. You can't think of anyone more deserving than this dude right here, and it hurts to know that his self-image is something you'll never be able to truly touch or fix. 

“No, no, don’t say that ‘Kat, you’re so good, you’re fine, man, you have feelings, let yourself feel 'em.”

Karkat sniffs again and buries his face in your chest. His voice comes out almost too muffled for you to make out what he’s saying. “You know, for an obstinate, emotionally constipated dick, you’re way too good at this.”

You rub his back for a few minutes until he stops crying. By the time he pulls away, he groans and wipes his face with his sleeves. “Ugh, I probably look so gross now.”

“Nope, still handsome.”

“Fuck you.” After a moment, he adds. “…Thanks, though.”

You lean over and kiss his cheek before the discomfort creeps back in and you're forced to retreat back into your own space. “Don’t worry about it. I meant what I said, by the way. You couldn’t embarrass me even if you tried, that’s how swexy you are.”

“Never say that again.”

You laugh and put your seatbelt back on as Karkat gets back on the road. Your phone buzzes in your pocket and your good mood almost instantly evaporates as your stomach turns with dread.

You have a message from Hal.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shorter, but i wanted dave to work through these emotions before i moved on. it's an important chapter, i think :)
> 
>  
> 
> i made lil hal's text orange bc two forms of red hurt my eyes to read haha

Despite how much you want to, you don’t check your phone for the rest of the night and try to focus on your date with Karkat. In the moments you’re able to push your intrusive thoughts out of your head, you have fun. Karkat isn’t as touchy as he usually is, and at some points in the night, this comforts you.

But when you remember the messages you haven't checked yet and what they imply, the thoughtfulness takes a more sinister tone. You start to wonder if Karkat thinks you’re dirty. You start to wonder, against all rational thought, if Karkat thinks you’re disgusting. You wonder if he _knows_.

You rein that shit in fast, though. After all, you _are_ the master of shoving things off until later. The master of avoidance, it is you. No one in the universe can even remotely reach your level of evasion, and that is a fact. At this rate, you should hit up The Guinness Book of World Records, because you are the motherfucking king of cop-outs. 

Focusing on Karkat gives you the out you need to justify ignoring your panic for a while, though. You pay for dinner, lead him around some of the less sketchy parts of Downtown, and give him the relaxing, fun night out that he deserves. It's literally the least you can do for him, and every smile he sends your way is one-hundred percent worth it.

But by the time Karkat drops you off, your can't ignore it any longer. The dread is making you so sick that you consider not checking the messages at all, but you know that you wanted this. You need to know, so you need to check. There's no denying this, no pushing it off. You open the messages, heart pounding in your chest.

AR: I’ve finished my scan.  


AR: As per your request, no one will ever see what I’ve found ever again.

Fuck. So he did find something. You knew it. Even though you suspected as much, it still hurts. It still hurts that Bro would… Do that to you, even though you know he’s always just been a crummy person, deep, deep down. Why is this so surprising to you?

Your fingers are trembling while you type, so you do your best to avoid any mistakes. It's a feeble crack at hiding just how close you are to freaking out, but an attempt nonetheless.

TG: what did you find  


AR: Dave.  


AR: It’s fine. I’m handling it, as I was requested to do. I only wanted to tell you that I have it all under control.  


TG: i need to know  


AR: I don’t think that’s the best idea.  


TG: please just  


TG: i swear to fucking god  


TG: please just fucking tell me what you found  


TG: i cant handle not knowing this shit okay??  


AR: Dave  


TG: tell me  


TG: i need  


TG: FUCK  


AR: You seem to be dangerously close to freaking out.  


TG: i know youre trying to protect me or whatever but i dont think you fucking get that not telling me is the fastest way to make shit worse dude  


TG: if you dont want me freaking out this is a surefire way to make sure that happens bro  


AR: I’ll tell you, but please take a few deep breaths first.  


TG: ok fine fine fine im fine  


TG: tell me  


TG: before i actually incapacitate myself with how not okay i am right now because im getting to that point  


TG: im teetering and about .5 seconds from losing my marbles  


TG: my marbles will be launched straight from the highest fucking building in the galaxy and shatter on the concrete below  


TG: right by those poor innocent bystanders  


TG: whos fucking glass marbles are these its so sad theyre all shattered now bc some bozo launched them off the edge  


TG: too bad no one was there to deescalate the situation so the owner didnt feel the need to chuck them down!  


AR: Alright. Breathe, bro. I’ll be upfront. Upfront as all hell.  


AR: We're being blunt up in here so I'll say that I found a good chunk of material. Pictures, photos, some more innocent than others.  


AR: Many were hosted on private servers.  


AR: I traced as many as I could and forwarded information to the police, after I deleted what you were in, of course.  


AR: The people who were in possession of what you were… Featured in all had large collections of general child pornography. Usually, I would keep myself out of it, but I’m not that heartless.  


AR: Despite the fact that I have no heart, that is.  


AR: Instead, perhaps I should say that I’m not without a conscience. At least when it pertains issues concerning my family.

Your vision goes blurry and you have to take a few deep breaths, trying to re-center yourself. Fuck. _Fuck_. 

By the time you look back down at your phone, a good ten minutes of zoning out has gone by, and Hal seems to have said more. Karkat’s also left you a few messages saying that he had fun with you, but you can’t bring yourself to open them. You don't trust yourself to behave like a normal human being right now.

AR: Dave, are you alright?  


AR: I’m sorry if I didn’t handle this properly. I will admit that though I'm flawless, I'm paradoxically not without flaws.  


AR: Especially concerning emotions, tact, and other social niceties that elude my mostly digital grasp.  


AR: Should I contact Dirk? D?  


TG: no  


TG: just  


TG: fuck  


TG: so its all gone  


AR: Yes. I’ve wiped everything I could find, that is.  


TG: did you…  


AR: Did I what  


TG: did you look at any of it  


AR: Well, I had to in order to properly scan what I was sifting through.  


AR: But if you’re worried about whether or not I think of you differently now that I’ve seen what I’ve seen, I can definitively say that this has changed nothing.  


AR: Except now, I think I know what hatred truly feels like.  


TG: okay  


TG: hahhh  


TG: okay okay  


TG: thanks hal  


TG: i need to go now  


TG: yknow have a good ol freak out in peace  


TG: a big huge tantrum is in order i think  


TG: its prime bitchbaby hour and ive been crowned boss baby of all little dumb babies  


TG: fuck im just gonna go  


AR: Feel better. If you need anything else, I’m here.  


TG: yeah

You set your phone down and dig your palms into your eyes, a poor attempt at trying to calm yourself down. You guess… You’re relieved that all that shit is gone from the internet now, at least. And that some disgusting pedophiles are probably going to be arrested sometime soon. That’s pretty great. No arguing with that, at least.

But you’re still caught up in the fact that Bro really just fucking posted that shit. Or gave it to other people to post. The thought of grimy adults rubbing it out to literally footage of you being—

Of you being…

You keen into your forearms and press your palms up harder into your skull, hoping that somehow, you can push the idea straight from your brain. Why would he do that to you? Why would he do any of that to you?

You were a _kid_. You never did _anything_ to Bro. You never did anything to deserve this, did you?

You never—

You just wanted him to love you.

That’s all you’ve ever wanted: to be good enough. To be loved. That’s why you did the things you did, that’s why you bent under his will and conformed to whatever he wanted you to be, even if you failed spectacularly. That’s why you’re like this now. All because he just got a kick out of doing sick and twisted things to you. All because he thought raising you was a game, or something that he could get something out of. He used you.

He used you.

You just wanted him to _love_ you. And you were nothing but a fucking toy to him. Something he could break and put back together again in his image. 

Bro always loved making things. Putting things together.

It never occurred to you that the reason he loved it so much was because he could break what he wanted to fix first. It never occurred to you that it was so fun to him because he could rebuild you back just the way he wanted. Like a puppet he could sew back together. Like a robot he could reprogram down to the last instinct. Everything he ever did was to meet some sick desire he had. 

Everything he ever did to you. It was all just something for him to pass the time with.

But to you, it was your entire world he was screwing with. To you, it wasn’t just a game, and you’re starting to think that if Bro were alive right now, he’d tell you how weak you’ve become. But you know, deep down, that he’d be happy that you’re like this. He’d be happy that he so thoroughly fucked you up that you’re still stuck on him, even after he’s dead. That you’re still isolated to your very core, just because of what he did.

Through your anxiety attack (and tears, cool you’ve been crying a lot lately, maybe making up for the more than half of your life that you weren’t allowed to) you notice that even though you’re sad, even though you feel fucking sick to your stomach, for once, the hatred isn’t self-directed.

For once, you’re not calling yourself names, you’re not berating yourself for going along with the games he played with you, you’re not angry at the little Dave who went along with it all.

Instead, you’re fucking furious at Bro for treating you like one of his stupid toys. You’re so _mad_ that he took every semblance of innocence straight from your body. You’re burning from the inside out, shaking and crying and _pissed_ at what he did to you. 

You’d give anything right now to go back in time to save yourself from those things. You imagine yourself, small and helpless, scared and weak, and you imagine Bro, thinking it’s sooo funny that you can’t protect yourself, laughing at you when you cry, mocking you, and you see white, imagining how good it’d feel to knock him down a bit, beat the shit out of him, and mock him right back.

You’re sick of being what he’d want you to be. You don’t want to live in the shadow of your abuse for your entire goddamn life. You want to feel, you want to love, you want to be happy for once. You want to look at yourself and say with certainty that you’re worth your life, that you’re worth your recovery, and that there’s nothing your past can say about it to change your mind.

The conditioned part of yourself recoils in disgust from the surge of compassion you feel for yourself, but the rest of you is too resentful, too fired up, to give that thought the time of day.

You’ve spent your entire life hating yourself. You’ve spent your entire life seeing yourself as dirty, used up, unworthy, not good enough, annoying, needy, clingy, whatever the fuck else Bro instilled in you. You’ve spent your entire life chasing after the guy who’d rape you then teach you that you’d wanted it all along. The guy who'd smack a literal child around and then claim _you_ were the defective one.

 _FUCK THAT_. 

By the time you stop crying, your body is too exhausted to keep up with the anger that’s built up inside you. It transforms into sadness quickly afterwards, and you slump over in bed. Sadness is a bit easier to deal with than anger.

You’ve never really felt this viscerally about _anything_ before, and a part of you fears that it’s just another sign that you’re turning into _him_ , even though you’d rather die than let that happen.

But, ah, that’s probably proof enough that you won’t, right? You’d rather die. The thought of him doing that shit to you makes you sick. You'd never, not in a million years, do something like that to someone else. Especially not a child. No one deserves that. No one.

You didn’t deserve it. 

And though you’re sure this isn’t the end of your self-hatred in the slightest, in this moment, the only one you hate is Bro. You cling to that thought for as much as it’s worth and pull the covers up around you.

You’re too tired to change out of your dress clothes. It's as if every emotion has been wiped out of your body by your little episode. 

At least you can take comfort in the fact that Hal deleted all that… Stuff off the face of the planet. You bet Bro never anticipated _that_ one, just another bit of proof that he wasn’t the know-it-all hotshot he taught you to believe he was.

The image of who Bro was, who he is, is crumbling in your mind, bit by bit. That’s probably for the best.

It feels like losing something. It feels like, in a weird way, he’s dying all over again. But bits of him are disappearing from your brain for good, finally, after all these years.

A few more tears leak out of your eyes, even though you don’t want to mourn that piece of shit at all. You guess it’s unavoidable.

For the longest time, he was your world. 

Even though you were nothing more than a speck in his.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was hard to write bc it didnt feel like i was getting everything down right, no matter how hard i tried. still posting it, because i cant be happy with EVERY chapter, haha. 
> 
> almost nearing the end here, a little more conflict to come before i wrap up this fic with more sweet, sweet comfort.

You wake up feeling like a prime, ripe, steaming piece of dog shit. 

That is to say: you feel terrible. 

Apparently, you slept straight through your alarms somehow, which isn’t like you at all, and D is knocking at your door because you guys need to leave to see Courtney, and oh shit.

You stumble out of bed thoroughly sore, like you just ran a marathon, and your stomach is cramped up like someone kicked you straight in the gut. It’s not fun in the slightest, but you ignore the discomfort because you’ve had worse. Instead, you focus on getting ready as fast as humanly possible.

For a Strider, that just so happens to be _pretty_ damn fast.

You grab some bread before following D out the door and out to his car. You don’t want to shove food in your mouth, you are feeling pretty crappy after all, but you know it’d probably be a good idea, so you force some down and try to keep the crumbs on your shirt instead of D’s car.

“Did you forget to set an alarm?”

“Nah. Slept through it.”

D glances at you before starting the engine. He pulls out of the parking garage with the finesse of someone who only sort of knows how to drive. Absolutely amazing, as always. “That’s not like you. Everything good?”

You consider it for a moment. You sure are feeling some sort of way, that's for sure. You’re drained as fuck, but you can’t bring yourself to feel much of anything right now, except for a weird sense of defeat? 

You remind yourself (again, and not for the last time) that D knows and hasn’t judged you, not once, for any of this. He’s safe. You’d appreciate some assurance before getting your brain picked apart, especially since you think today is going to be… A whole deal, to say the least. 

Telling him about these things is hard, but it’s getting easier and easier each time you try. Either that, or you’re really just _that_ drained right now and can’t summon the energy to be ashamed.

Regardless of reason, you manage to tell him. Good for you. “Do you remember a few weeks ago…? When I told you about that nightmare I had?”

D pauses and purses his lips. “…I think? Wait, no, yeah, I remember. What’s up, did you have it again or something?”

“No. Dirk overheard us. Basically.”

D’s head whips to the side and he stares at you, fear plain on his face. He swerves just enough to make someone honk at him, and only then does he look away. Even then, the worry exuding from him almost makes you sick with how real it feels. “He didn’t give you a hard time or anything, right? I mean, it’d be out of character for him to—I don’t know, but if he did, I promise I’ll talk to him dude—”

“Whoa, man, way to jump to the worst possible conclusion ever. No, no, he was fine.” Yeah, you and D really are similar, holy shit. It’d be funny if the subject of child pornography wasn’t being alluded to. “He programmed Hal. Had him scan the net for um… Anything I was in.”

When you trail off, D takes a minute to respond. The silence between those two moments is nigh unbearable. He’s as afraid to know the truth as you are to tell it. You don’t want to hurt him, but you want to include him in your life, you think? Maybe hurting people is unavoidable sometimes, if you want to really be close to them at least.

D obviously doesn’t want to ask directly if Hal found anything. That’s understandable, and you’re kind of glad that he’s giving you the agency here to decide. What a rad dude. Cool guardian, best friend. Totally not like the psychopathic douchebag who leaked child pornography of you on the world wide web. Nope. 

“It was out there, yeah,” is all you manage to say on the matter. It’s enough, because something in D’s expression deflates, and you rush to assure him that you’re fine. Or… Maybe not fine, but your breakdown has passed, see? You’re here, in one piece, and you're not crying or anything. That should be enough. “I’m planning on talking about it today with Courtney.”

“Fuck…”

“It’s okay. He wiped it all clean out of existence, sent evidence to the police, all that jazz. It’s over now.”

“Still, doesn’t make it suck any less. I’m sorry.”

You don't know what to say to that. Yon't know how to just accept that someone else thinks that what you went through was shitty. It's hard to conceptualize and even harder to believe.

“Hey, it’s not like it was your fault. Don’t be.”

He still doesn’t look convinced that this isn’t something he’s responsible for. And fuck that, D’s been the best, he’s done nothing wrong. He shouldn’t get to look this guilty. Not for something like this. Not for something that’s so done and over that it’s practically fuckin’ nonexistent at this point.

He doesn’t say anything more, so you both leave it at that. You figure that maybe this isn’t something you can convince him of, even though you really want to be able to, which kind of… Blows, you guess.

But you’re at Courtney’s office before you even realize it and D turns to you with his mouth pulled into a sad line.

“Can I hug you?” 

You bite your lip, still kind of surprised that he even bothers to communicate so explicitly with you about these things. Hell yeah, you want a hug. You could do with some physical affection right now, so you lean in to accept it. You think D needs this too, if the way he squeezes you is any indication.

“I know you don’t want me saying sorry, but I really wish things had been different, dude,” D says into your neck, squeezing you tighter one more time before letting you go. 

You get it. You do. You wish things had been different, too. But they weren’t, things definitely were what they were, and what-ifs have never helped you before. So you get out of his car and wave him goodbye, unable to tell him as such. 

Things are different now, and that has to mean something. 

It has to. 

The moment you get into Courtney's office, you're ready to hit the ground running.

“A lot happened this week,” you tell her, pretty much right off the bat. You're ready to get deep into this shit while it’s, YOU REPEAT, still fresh, hot, and lest you forget: steaming. You’re feeling weirdly okay. But again, maybe it’s because you're not particularly feeling much of anything at all.

“Oh?” She sits back, studying you for a moment, but otherwise waits for you to elaborate. 

Where do you start? Maybe you should just spit it all out at once. Get it over with. 

“Long story short, I’ve been pretty busted up over not knowing if Bro’s videos of me were up on the internet somewhere. Dirk’s AI found a whole host of crap, deleted it, I had a breakdown last night over it, you know how it goes.” 

Your voice remains flat, right to the end. As if it doesn’t bother you. 

But you’ve thrown a lot at her, and it shows in her expression. Before she can get any words in, you tack on: “Oh yeah, also, don’t worry about the legality and shit, the AI, Hal, he sent it over to the police. So we’re good on that front, no immediate danger for any of the other kids dragged into it. It's gonna be handled and shit, no need to report.”

Courtney nods. Very slowly. Her eyebrows are scrunched up, and she seems to be processing everything you’ve just spewed at her. Cool. You’re so cool right now it isn’t even funny. 

“Well, I’m glad the uh… AI—not sure about how that works, but I won’t ask—dealt with the material responsibly. How are you feeling about all this, though? You seem to be doing… Well.”

“Hah, well, I don’t know. I’m not feeling much of anything right now. Last night I think I tired myself out. Got really fucking mad before I fell asleep.”

_That_ part seems to interest her in particular. “You got angry? Tell me more about that.” 

“I dunno. I just flipped, I guess, and all I could think about was how mad I was at Bro for… Betraying me. For doing that to me. I started crying and I know it’s—it’s kind of fucked up, but all I wanted to do was beat the shit out of him. All I could think of was how…” You stop talking when your voice wavers. Maybe you’re feeling more strongly about this than you thought you felt.

When you don’t continue, Courtney picks up the conversation for you. “In the past, you’ve had trouble with expressing anger towards others, right? This sounds like a good thing. Maybe even healthy. Sure, feeling angry all the time wouldn’t be productive, but reclaiming that emotion can be pretty powerful. It isn’t ‘fucked up’ at all, not in the slightest.”

Yet it feels fucked up, doesn’t it? It isn’t like you had the healthiest model of what productive anger should look like when you were growing up. What if, deep inside, you internalized that abusive, violent version without even realizing it? What if, by feeling anger, you’re just that much closer to unleashing a monster, one that Bro hid somewhere in you?

Granted, that sounds kind of stupid, but the fear persists nonetheless.

“But…” You have trouble explaining just why this bothers you so much, even though it makes perfect sense in your head. “But I don’t want to be like him? Like, what if that anger turns into something more one day? Being angry just feels… Bad.”

“You said anger makes you feel bad, and it’s understandable given your childhood, but I’d like to try redefining anger here for a moment as something that’s healthy. I'd like to redefine it as something that helps you constructively identify your needs, just like every other emotion in your body.” Courtney studies you for a moment as you squirm in your seat. Your discomfort is obviously giving you away. “Having a normal emotion won’t turn you into an abuser, Dave, and your concern is telling enough that the likelihood is incredibly slim.”

Fuck.

“Still…”

Yeah. Still. 

How can she know what’s going to happen? If you get lax about this, what’s to say you won’t get complacent and fuck up along the way somewhere? You don’t want to let that happen. You can’t let it happen.

Courtney regards you again more carefully and seems to recognize something in the way you’re holding your body together. Usually, you appreciate her perceptiveness, but right now, it makes you want to hide, because you’re not sure if you’re ready to confront whatever she sees in you right now.

“You said earlier that you weren’t feeling much of anything about this, but you seem to be feeling something right now.”

Yeah. You guess she’s right. Before, it was hard to name, or maybe unpleasant to come to terms with. But there’s still a feeling there. You just don’t want to think about it. 

“It’s just… This weird, defeated feeling? I don’t know. Like I'm empty.”

Like you're being swallowed whole by the entirety of the universe. Like you're floating through the ocean, lost and purposeless. Like you've been thrust into the world knowing that you'll live as a nobody and die as a nobody. It's that sense of being untethered again, as if you're a balloon being let go. 

“Do you have any idea why you’re feeling that way?”

You think about it. About what happened last night. About what happened long before—long, long, long before, way back to the moment you were born. Maybe even before that, to when Bro was born. There’s no telling when this all truly began. There's no telling when things truly got so difficult and painful.

“I guess I never thought Bro would do that to me. Not really, at least. Even though he consistently took shit too far, I don’t know, I didn’t think he’d do _that_. Even when he did all that other stuff, at least I could justify it. This is just more, though. In so many fucked up ways. It’s like… I don’t know. I don’t. It makes me upset. But I don’t want to be upset.”

“What he did was unforgivable,” she points out solemnly. “From my perspective, it seems that you’ve realized, at least subconsciously, that your ideal vision of your father isn’t meshing with his actions, with what he’s really done to you.”

That sounds about right. 

For the longest time, you’ve had this image of what Bro should be to you, because it was the Bro that he wanted you to idolize. Like you’d said, everything else has always been justifiable to you in one way or another. You were too ____ or too ____ and Bro had to help you get better. There was always some reason for him to hurt you. There was always some flaw he saw in you that he had to fix. He just had to. You could've been fixed if you just. Tried. Harder. You just had to meet him half way, that's what he always told you. But you could never rise to the occasion.

That's another thing he told you.

But the porn thing kind of takes it a little too far for you to justify. It’s scary, and you don’t like having unequivocal evidence that Bro was just a shitty person. 

It makes this all so much harder to deny. So is how you envision Bro, the Bro of your childhood, not fitting in with the facts laid out in front of you?

“I mean, I guess. It’s just weird. I had this moment of total clarity last night where I felt like I finally understood everything. It’s kind of fucking with me. Even beyond the whole Bro thing. Because now it’s like that clarity’s slipped back through my fingers and I can’t figure it the fuck out anymore.”

“What kind of realization did you have?”

“It’s hard to say out loud but…” Yeah, this is the part you don’t like to face, not for the life of you. It’s the part that confuses you because you’v never been allowed to be on your own side in your entire goddamned life. It’s unfamiliar. Scary. Fuck, it makes you want to run away as fast as humanly possible.

“It was like… For a moment, I knew nothing was my fault. I hated Bro instead of myself, I didn’t feel gross, it clicked in my head and made so much sense. But now I just feel weird. Everything’s been making me feel weird lately because it’s too different and I think to myself like… Am I cut out to be a regular person? Am I cut out to have people I care about in my life? Shit like that, you know? But then it all disappeared, and I’m back to square one, wondering how the fuck I managed to have that all make sense.”

“Even if it only made sense for a moment, that’s still wonderful, Dave.” By the way Courtney smiles at you, you can tell she means it. It’s still hard to believe this is a _good_ thing with how weird it makes you feel. “We’re going to work on having you feel that way for longer periods of time, okay? But that's great to hear.”

When you don’t say anything, she folds her hands in her lap and lowers her voice, as if she’s letting you in on a little secret. “Concerning your worries about what you’re truly ‘cut out’ for, let me just tell you that I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be afraid of the unknown here. Familiarity is key, and this is uncharted territory for you, isn’t it? It’ll take some getting used to.”

Take some getting used to. Yeah. Just like everything else you’ve worked through these past few years. 

You take a deep breath, willing your shoulders to relax as much as possible. It seems like too much, there’s so much to work through and not enough time to work through it. Not enough time at all.

“Yeah, that makes sense... It’s just frustrating though. Even with Karkat, it’s like I’m wading through a fucking ocean of bombs and triggers. Like, there’s so much to wade through it isn’t even funny. I guess I’m finally realizing just how much Bro fucked up my interpersonal skills, because sometimes the kindness just fucking stings. Then I go back to the whole ‘am I capable of being a real person’ thing, then I get stuck in my own head…” You trial off, wringing your hands together. 

You feel helpless. 

That’s the root of all this, huh?

Courtney gives you a sympathetic smile. “Yet you’re still here, trying. That’s very admirable.” 

You don’t know how to explain to her that you don’t think it’s very admirable at all. It’d be pointless to argue with her, you think, so you drop it and try to let the compliment pass without judging it too harshly.

How do you sort through all these wonky-ass emotions? Where do you even start?

“I still feel like I don’t know how to approach intimacy, or even make it feel good for me. I’m so stuck in my own head most of the time, and it’s hard to separate the Bro shit from the Karkat shit.”

You shift again in your seat, suddenly thinking about Bro more than you’d like to right now. Nope. Shut it down. Nope nope nope. You don’t want to get into all that right now. And oh, look, Courtney is saying something. Let’s focus on that instead.

“Going back to the concept of familiarity, I’d like to give you some credit here. If you’re used to feeling unsafe, how can you possibly expect yourself to be fully comfortable in these situations, especially when you want to push through that discomfort as fast as possible?”

“I don’t know.” You hate how afraid you sound. Who are you afraid of here? Bro? Or yourself? “I just hate feeling like I’m broken.”

“You have to accept what you’re feeling to really heal; you can’t just force yourself through it. When you first came in and said you felt nothing about what had happened, I could see how much you were desperately trying to cover up the fact that you were hurting.” Aaaand there’s that sympathetic look again, making you feel all dizzy and out of it. “It’s alright to feel pain. And it's alright to show that pain in front of others.”

_Were_ you covering up the fact that you were hurting? 

Fuck. Maybe, yeah. It’s just hard, even after all this time, to admit that even to yourself. The self-compassion thing is hard to master. You’re like, level negative five in that department.

But maybe you can dig harder. Try to unearth that shit. Your forbidden, long-lost feelings. 

“…It did hurt. But I don’t know, a part of me just shut that down the moment I woke up. I know, I know, it’s like one of those things. Bro said emotions were bad, so I feel bad about them. Whatever. But still, I don’t know how to fucking stop.”

“Well, a good way to start might be through self-parenting your inner child.” Okay. That sounds dumb. But you let Courtney continue because she’s never led you astray before. “Bro gave you a script as your parent, a guide if you will, on how to interact with the world. A lot of the time, experiences reinforce this script, and it can make us reenact harmful behaviors. Or keep us acting in ways that we used to act in order to survive. Talking to your inner child can help create a new script by changing up the expectations. It can help create a safe place for you to exist inside your own body.”

“No offense, but the inner child thing sounds like a load of horse crap. Or at least really, really cringey.”

“It can seem like that, I agree, but I’d encourage you to give it a try. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep doing it.”

You think about it. Sure, you can try, but you don’t get what you’d even say to yourself in the first place. What sort of shit would reconstitute as “reparenting” or whatever? You’ve never had a good model for that, so you don’t know what that’d even look like.

“What would I even say to myself?”

“Well... You mentioned that last night, you had the impulse to physically harm Bro for what he did you to when you were a kid. What did you feel towards the child version of yourself in that moment?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to protect him from what was happening by hurting Bro.” It clicks in that moment that you _did_ want to provide something to yourself. It clicks that you wanting to stop Bro was, by extension, a message you were sending to yourself that you deserved protection. You curl in on yourself and cross your arms over your chest. “Oh.”

“Exactly. That’s all this is. If you’re feeling lost or confused or stuck in those emotional flashbacks that tell you you’re not really safe, I want you to try checking in with the younger you, back when he first internalized all these harmful messages. Just tell him that he’s safe, or that you’ll protect him, or whatever it is that you would’ve wanted to hear from an adult when you were a child. If you feel lost and don’t know what to say, you can think about what D would tell you, too. He’s been a great parental figure for you these past few years, hasn’t he? You can always draw from that.”

“Fuck. That still feels really cringey.”

Courtney laughs. “It may help with your boyfriend, too. If you stop to examine just why you’re feeling so ‘stung’ by him being nice to you, going back to reassure yourself that this is a different time may help make you feel safer."

“Yeah… Hopefully.” 

Admittedly, that’d be nice. Courtney tells you that she’ll email you more information about the whole self-parenting thing. Though you’re still not completely sold on it, you guess you trust her judgment and expertise as an real, bonafide professional. 

“We’re almost out of time,” she says. “I do want to check in with you about what you said the AI found, though. That’s a pretty huge thing to have unloaded onto you.”

You hum. “I still don’t know exactly how I feel about everything. It’s kind of all over the place. But I have people who’re sticking around, and that support’s really helping.”

You couldn’t possibly have better (alive) family members, that’s for sure. You’ve got a rockin’ boyfriend, a cool set of best friends—you’re practically set. So even though this isn’t easy, and you don’t want to be doing it, at least you’ve got love. More than you’ve ever experienced in your whole life, at that. 

“That’s wonderful.” Courtney really does look happy for you, too. She’s not just faking it. “Have you told Karkat about what’s been going on since we talked about it last?”

“No. But I think I might. Soon.” Fuck, that’s scary. But you’re not sure how much longer you can go on like this without clueing Karkat in on what’s going on. Maybe he’d be able to help you if he actually knew what was wrong. “I don’t know. Everyone else has been really helpful, so I know he would be too. I just don’t want to hurt him. I’m trying to give him more credit though, like you said, but it's still... Hard.”

“Great, I’m glad to hear it. It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to hurt him. You care about him, after all. Just try to remember the cycle of intimacy we talked about before—sometimes what actually hurts people is being shut out. Sometimes, being protected from what we _assume_ will hurt them actually does more harm than good. Which, of course, hurts you in the end, too.”

“Fuck. Yeah. I’ll keep that in mind. It’s just… Weird. You know.”

She laughs and agrees. Recovery, in general, can feel quite bizarre. Unfamiliarity. All that fun stuff. You say goodbye to her and make your way out to D’s car, new thoughts racing around inside your head, demanding your attention.

“How was the session?”

“Confusing,” you tell him. “I think… I want to tell Karkat about everything? But I don’t want to fuck everything up.”

D gives you a confident, loving look. You burn it into your memory so you can remember what it feels like to have someone who believes in you _this_ much for what feels like no reason whatsoever. “I don’t think you could fuck it up if you tried.”

You twiddle your thumbs and shrug. There’s a lot you could say to argue with that, a bunch of ways you just know it could go wrong. Yet again, you’re trying out the whole "Not Calling Yourself Names Or Arguing With Compliments" thing, even if you really, really want to. 

D doesn’t let you off that easily, though. “Karkat adores you, Dave. Whatever you end up doing, I know it’ll turn out. Trust me.”

You make a noncommittal noise, not willing to buy into it completely. Still, you know deep down that he'd never jerk you around like that. He means everything that he's saying wholeheartedly, and you know this well enough to keep your doubts to yourself. 

Don’t even give them the light of day. 

You want to be closer to Karkat, you want to know what it’s like to _love_ , full on l-word, with no censoring required. You want to feel like you belong, like you can trust someone else with your whole being, heart, and soul. You want to be able to trust Karkat, even with the darkest parts of your past, the parts so entrenched in shame that they may as well be fuckin’ mummified in that shit. 

It makes up who you are though, doesn’t it? And Karkat’s made it very clear, over and over again, just how much he cares about _who you are_.

Everything’ll turn out. It’ll be okay.

You’ll be okay.

And if you end up slipping—if you fuck up somehow—you've got some pretty rad people who'll be there for you regardless.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fact that this is almost over is crazy to me lol
> 
> anyway  
> here we go again

Bolstered by D’s assurances that everything will turn out fine, you spend the rest of the night going back and forth with yourself about what you’d even _start_ to tell Karkat. The longer you wait, the scarier it gets to even _think_ about it; and this isn’t a matter of whether you will or won’t anymore. You know you will. But the anticipation might be worse than the idea of actually telling him at this point.

You’re afraid that this is more than Karkat signed up for when he started dating you. You’re afraid that you’re too much, that this’ll be the point of no return. You’re fucking terrified that if you open up, you’ll be rejected, and everything will have been for nothing. 

It’s something you need to unlearn though, this reluctance to let yourself hope for things. This reluctance, or actually, this downright _refusal_ to put yourself in a position that might turn out poorly. That won’t help you. It won’t help your relationship.

This is Karkat. You’re in this together and you need to start acting like it.

You lay in bed and decide that fuck it, you need to do this before you lose the nerve. It’s past midnight, but you know he’ll still be awake, so you shoot him a message and try to calm the tremor in your hands.

Is it cowardly to talk about this over text? If it is, it’ll have to do, because you know you’ll back out if you have to look at him while you talk about this shit.

TG: hey you awake?

The response is almost instantaneous. Of course it is.

CG: YES, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU AWAKE? SHOULDN’T YOU BE SLEEPING? AREN’T HUMAN SLEEP SCHEDULES INCREDIBLY FRAGILE OR SOMETHING?? 

TG: maybe 

TG: but i wanted to talk to you about something if youre up for it 

TG: i know its late so if no thats ok i wont be offended or anything 

CG: OH. 

CG: YEAH, I’M FREE, IT’S NOT LIKE I DO ANYTHING WITH MY VAPID, PURPOSELESS LIFE. 

CG: THAT CAME OUT A LOT EDGIER THAN I MEANT IT TO. UGHHH. THAT WAS A JOKE I SWEAR. 

CG: CARRY ON, PLEASE IGNORE MY BUMBLING ATTEMPTS AT “LIGHTENING THE MOOD” AS IT WERE. THAT WAS A BUST. 

TG: haha no youre good 

TG: watching you trip over yourself more than makes up for it every time i promise 

CG: BUT YOU WANTED TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING…? 

TG: yeah 

TG: damn i think a part of me just wanted you to forget that i brought that up 

TG: why is this so hard 

TG: gimme a minute 

CG: IF YOU DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, THAT’S OKAY THOUGH. IF YOU’RE TRYING TO DO THAT THING AGAIN, AND YOU KNOW WHICH THING I’M TALKING ABOUT, I’M GONNA BEAT YOU UP. BUT NOT LITERALLY. 

CG: YET STILL. MAYBE LITERALLY 

TG: im not 

TG: i wanted to talk about it because 

TG: i care about you 

TG: and this gets in the way of that coming across sometimes i think?? 

TG: im trying really damn hard here to not minimize this 

TG: like harder than youd fucking believe 

TG: my effort is at a vibranium level of hardness 

TG: and its only getting harder 

TG: if thats even possible but for the sake of this longwinded way to avoid talking about this 

TG: ill say yes it can get harder and it absolutely is 

CG: DAVE, WE DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO. 

TG: i know 

TG: just 

TG: you know how sometimes i dont like to be touched 

TG: when i go all mutant ninja turtles retreating into my shell on you and shit 

CG: YEAH? 

TG: well um 

TG: i know this is stupid 

TG: wait fuck its not stupid taking that back right this instant we are 

TG: not doing that here nope we are not 

TG: heres a completely valid request that isnt at all stupid 

TG: phew here we go 

TG: so if i tell you about this i need you to promise me beforehand that youre not going to hate me or think that im gross 

TG: that may seem really dumb or at least unnecessary to you but 

CG: I PROMISE. 

TG: oh okay that was 

TG: easy 

CG: YEAH FUCKFACE. THIS MIGHT COME AS A SURPRISE TO YOU, BUT I DO CARE ABOUT YOU, YOU KNOW. 

CG: AND THAT ISN’T GOING TO CHANGE. I COULD GO ON AND ON ABOUT HOW I LIKE FEELING CLOSER TO YOU, HOW I LIKE WHEN YOU OPEN UP TO ME BECAUSE IT MAKES ME FEEL *SPECIAL* AND CHOSEN, KIND OF IN A WAY THAT NO ONE ELSE CAN EVER MAKE ME FEEL. 

CG: BUT I’LL SAVE THAT FOR ANOTHER DAY WHEN IT’S ROMANTIC. AND NOT JUST ME REMINDING YOU THAT I DON’T JUDGE YOU LIKE YOU’RE AFRAID I WILL. 

CG: JUST KNOW THAT I PROMISE WITH ALL THOSE GOOEY FEELINGS INCLUDED RIGHT IN THERE WITH IT. 

TG: youre literally the best do you know that 

CG: I TRY. 

CG: BUT YEAH. WHAT’S UP, IS SOMETHING BOTHERING YOU? DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP TOUCHING YOU SO OFTEN? I HAVE NOTICED THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO BE TOUCHED SOMETIMES. 

CG: I DON’T MIND OF COURSE!! I JUST 

CG: WISH I KNEW WHAT TO DO. 

TG: i know and youre fucking incredible because of that ok 

TG: you notice things you shouldnt have to notice 

TG: because i shouldnt expect you to be able to read my mind?? 

TG: so i wanted to tell you about the uh 

TG: the thing 

TG: i dont know what else id even call it but its basically the whole reason im so screwey in every way possible 

TG: and have such a hard time sometimes with like idk trying to be close to you 

CG: IT’S KIND OF MY JOB TO NOTICE THINGS ABOUT YOU. 

CG: BUT I GET WHAT YOU MEAN AND YOU’RE RIGHT, I CAN’T READ YOUR MIND 

CG: SO I’M HAPPY WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW. IT SEEMS LIKE IT’S REALLY BEEN WEIGHING YOU DOWN FOR A WHILE… 

TG: hah yeah 

TG: thatd be an understatement tbh 

TG: its all ive been thinking about 

TG: and its 

TG: idk hard to come to terms with how i feel about it 

TG: i could write a fucking essay on how many layers there are to this mess 

TG: and how deep this shit goes 

TG: but i dont think i could get the point across even then 

TG: at least not fully 

TG: so ill just say it and well go from there 

TG: okay here we go 

TG: okay 

TG: yeah

You spend a while staring at your phone screen with a numb sort of anxiety drowning out your every thought. You want to say what you were going to say. But everything’s fuzzy. Everything’s so confusing and you don’t know where to even begin with this.

You initiated the conversation, though. Surely, it’s just a leap of faith at this point. Telling yourself this doesn’t completely help, but it does help you push through the remainder of your brain fog. Or… Enough for you to continue your conversation.

CG: IT’S BEEN A FEW MINUTES. YOU OKAY? WE CAN STOP. 

TG: no i cant pussyfoot around this any more 

TG: i cant 

CG: OKAY, I THINK IT’S DUMB YOU CALL IT PUSSYFOOTING, BUT OKAY. 

CG: I CAN GET WHERE YOU’RE COMING FROM 

CG: I’LL BE PATIENT AND STOP MY FURIOUS DOOR-KNOCKING. 

TG: youve never been patient in your entire life karkat lol 

TG: but um 

TG: thanks you know i appreciate it a whole fucking lot 

TG: okay so basically long story short 

TG: very very long story short 

TG: very very very very long story short 

TG: my bro did more than just hit me when i was a kid 

CG: OH. 

CG: WHAT DID HE DO? 

TG: you know 

TG: like 

TG: … 

TG: you know?? 

CG: I’M NOT SURE I FOLLOW… 

TG: he 

TG: you know 

TG: he did more 

TG: come on karkat please dont make me say it shits kind of disgusting 

CG: WAIT. 

CG: WAIT. 

CG: DO YOU MEAN HE… 

TG: yeah 

TG: he did 

CG: FUCK 

CG: FUCK!!!! 

CG: I KNOW I’VE SAID THIS BEFORE BUT IF HE WAS ALIVE, I’D FUCKING KILL HIM ALL OVER AGAIN. ACTUALLY, SCRATCH THAT, I DON’T CARE IF HE’S DEAD! 

CG: I’M GOING TO KILL HIM AGAIN. SOMEHOW 

CG: I’LL FIND A WAY AND SLOWLY CASTRATE HIM WHILE I WATCH HIM DIE TIMES 2. THEN I’LL FIND A WAY TO BRING HIM BACK JUST SO I CAN KILL HIM AGAIN. 

CG: I JUST. 

CG: FUCK 

CG: I HAVEN’T MADE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE BEFORE, HAVE I? 

CG: BECAUSE YOU SAID THIS WAS RELATED TO HOW YOU SOMETIMES DRAW INTO YOURSELF 

CG: I’M SO SORRY IF I’VE EVER MADE YOU FEEL UNSAFE, EVEN IF I DIDN’T REALIZE THAT’S WHAT I WAS DOING. 

CG: DAMMIT, I DID SOMETHING THAT MADE YOU FEEL UNSAFE, DIDN’T I? 

TG: thats also what i wanted to talk to you about i guess 

TG: but hold up on the blaming yourself thing right now pls 

TG: this is 

TG: really hard for me to do so im sorry if it doesnt come out right 

TG: i wanted to apologize i guess because sometimes 

TG: when were doing things i dont think im fully present 

TG: and i hate myself so fucking much when i do shit like that bc its like 

TG: how can i trust myself 

TG: how can i trust my own motivations and my ability to say no when im constantly all over the place like im making you play 52 card pick up with my fucked up emotions? 

TG: what if i dont know what i really want and never will 

TG: and what if im doomed to be like this forever 

TG: an emotionally disconnected douchebag who cant even open up to save his life 

TG: and worse drags people into his bullshit when they dont even consent to it 

TG: god im just like him 

TG: thats all on me 

TG: so dont blame yourself for me feeling unsafe when i dont do shit to fix it 

CG: HOLD IT. HOLD YOUR HUMAN HORSES 

CG: YOU’RE NOT DOOMED TO BE “LIKE THIS” FOREVER. THAT’S WHY YOU’RE IN THERAPY. PLUS, YOUR PROGRESS SHOWS. THAT’S PROOF ENOUGH THAT THAT’S NOT TRUE, AND THAT YOU'RE NOT JUST SITTING THERE BEING COMPLACENT ABOUT WHAT'S HAPPENED TO YOU! 

CG: AND YOU’RE NOT LIKE BRO, GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE WITH THAT GRADE-A FUCKING NONSENSE. YOU’RE EMPATHETIC, AND KIND, AND FUNNY, AND AND 

CG: THAT GUY WAS ABSOLUTELY FUCKED IN THE THINKPAN! 

CG: ABSOLUTELY ROTTEN IN EVERY WAY, SHAPE, *AND* FORM. FROM THE INSIDE OUT. 

CG: OKAY, MAYBE IT STINGS A LITTLE BIT THAT YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT ANY OF THIS. AND IT HURTS TO KNOW THAT I MADE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE WITHOUT REALLY REALIZING THE FULL SCOPE OF EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON?? 

CG: BUT THIS IS A TWO-WAY STREET, AND IT’S NOT ON YOU TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING’S PERFECT, ALRIGHT. 

CG: IT’S ON THE BOTH OF US TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER INSTEAD OF PANTOMIMING LIKE COMPLETE JACKASSES, HOPING THAT THE OTHER WILL SOMEHOW UNDERSTAND. 

CG: WE MIGHT HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THAT MORE LATER, BUT I’M NOT MAD AT YOU, AND I UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU WERE COMING FROM 

CG: AND WHY IT TOOK YOU A WHILE TO TELL ME. 

CG: YOU BETTER NOT BE EQUATING THIS WITH WHAT THAT GUY DID 

CG: I SWEAR TO FUCK I’LL HAVE SOME WORDS TO SAY TO YOU. 

TG: i guess i shouldnt huh 

TG: thanks karkat 

TG: its hard to not compare myself to him sometimes 

TG: since he worked so hard to make me into who i am today 

TG: but i dont think he succeeded 

TG: i know that rationally 

TG: and if he didnt succeed 

TG: if he failed 

TG: then maybe that means 

TG: fuck i dont know the thought is there but i just cant make it make sense you know 

CG: IF HE FAILED, THEN YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO BECOME HIM. BECAUSE YOU WERE BETTER THAN HE COULD EVER FUCKING HOPE TO BE. 

CG: IF HE FAILED, THEN THAT MEANS YOU’RE A PRETTY OKAY PERSON 

CG: DARE I SAY MORE THAN OKAY. DAVE, YOU’RE A GREAT GUY. EVEN IF YOU CAN BE AN ASSHOLE SOMETIMES. 

TG: i guess 

TG: thanks for thinking so 

TG: im still working on the not being a dick to myself thing 

TG: but yeah thanks for listening 

TG: for tuning in for dave talks about his feelings hour 

CG: I FOR ONE LOVE WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS. YOU KNOW I’M ALL ABOUT THAT SHIT. 

CG: IF… IF YOU DON’T MIND 

CG: CAN I ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS? 

CG: THIS IS A LOT. BUT FOR YOUR INFORMATION, NONE OF THIS MAKES ME HATE YOU OR THINK THAT YOU’RE GROSS. 

CG: IT REFLECTS ON BRO. NOT YOU. 

CG: I JUST WANT TO UNDERSTAND BETTER, SO I CAN TREAT YOU HOW YOU NEED TO BE TREATED RIGHT NOW. I DON’T LIKE ADMITTING WHEN I DON’T KNOW SHIT, BUT I THINK I’M OUT OF MY ELEMENT HERE SO I’LL SET ASIDE MY EGO LIKE I’M HANGING UP A FINELY WORN GENTLEMANLY CAP. 

TG: yeah dude 

TG: ask away 

CG: WHAT KIND OF TOUCH MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE? 

CG: LIKE WHAT SHOULD I AVOID OR ASK YOU ABOUT? *SHOULD* I ASK YOU BEFOREHAND? OR WOULD THAT JUST MAKE YOU FEEL WEIRD? 

TG: fuck idk 

TG: this is where im kind of at a loss because i dont know what i want 

TG: or what i even like 

TG: because so much of my personality revolves around making other people feel good 

TG: and making sure other people are comfortable 

TG: my own senses are kind of jacked in that respect 

TG: but um 

TG: fuck idk i feel shitty asking this because you have needs 

TG: and i dont want you to feel like youre constantly getting the short end of the stick 

CG: WE’VE HAD THIS CONVERSATION BEFORE, DOOFUS. AS LONG AS WE’RE TOGETHER, THERE IS NO “SHORT END OF THE STICK” FOR ME. 

CG: THERE’S NOTHING I WOULD HATE MORE THAN MAKING YOU DO SOMETHING YOU’RE NOT READY TO DO, OKAY?? 

CG: IT WORRIES ME WHEN YOU SAY STUFF LIKE THAT. I TRUST YOU AND I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT WOULD MAKE YOU FEEL SAFER. 

TG: would it be okay if we dialed back our relationship to base 1 for a while 

TG: like hand holding is okay 

TG: but anything else right now im just 

TG: id appreciate it if we could press pause i guess 

TG: its ok if thats too much to ask though 

TG: it feels like too much to ask 

CG: IT ISN’T TOO MUCH TO ASK. AGAIN, AS LONG AS I’M DATING YOU, I’M FUCKING HAPPY, ALRIGHT? 

TG: alright 

TG: if youre sure 

TG: otherwise ill try my best to initiate if im feeling it 

TG: if i initiate it i think itll be fine 

CG: EVEN THEN, WE SHOULD HAVE A CODE WORD OR SOMETHING 

CG: YOU SAID IT’S HARD FOR YOU TO SAY NO SOMETIMES. WOULD IT HELP IF WE JUST DID A GESTURE, OR A DIFFERENT WORD ENTIRELY? MAYBE MAKE IT FEEL LIKE LESS PRESSURE IS BEING PUT ON YOU? 

TG: i think 

TG: a gesture might work 

TG: sometimes its hard for me to speak at all when i get like that 

TG: how about a shooing motion 

TG: a flick of the wrist like im lebron james or something??? 

CG: YEAH. I CAN WORK WITH THAT. 

CG: HOW’RE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW? 

TG: kind of 

TG: not great 

TG: unavoidably not great though 

TG: this shits kind of uncontrollable at times 

TG: but im not freaking out as hard as i thought i would 

TG: kind of built up this huge rejection in my head 

TG: youd turn me down nice and gently 

TG: you know cuz youre nice 

TG: tell me that even though im cool and obviously a sick as fuck guy, im still just more than you bargained for 

TG: which would be valid obvi 

TG: because this is a lot 

TG: i feel like i can be a lot sometimes 

TG: and you can say all you like about that and i can know deep deep inside or w/e that its not true but that doesnt change the fact that its there 

TG: even though im working on it 

TG: maybe im doing worse than i thought i was doing 

TG: if im going to be completely honest bc were being all honest with each other now 

TG: im scared 

TG: i said it earlier but im like 

TG: can i trust myself?? should i trust myself? 

TG: this is all just a fucking mess 

TG: one you definitely didnt sign up for 

TG: regardless of what anyone says im still freaked out 

TG: freaked out about being doomed to become that abusive asshole 

CG: WILL YOU STOP IT WITH THE FATALISTIC BULLSHIT? I’LL REPEAT IT AS MANY TIMES AS IT TAKES TO STICK IN YOUR OBTUSE LITTLE HUMAN BRAIN: 

CG: I’M WITH YOU BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT YOU. IF I DIDN’T CARE, I WOULDN’T BE HERE! 

CG: I’M A GROWN ASS TROLL AND I DON’T DO THE WHOLE “STICKING AROUND BECAUSE I THINK I HAVE TO” THING ANYMORE. I’M NOT 6. 

CG: I DON’T THINK LESS OF YOU. I DON’T PERCIEVE YOU AS A BURDEN, OR AS A WRIGGLER I NEED TO SWADDLE AROUND THE HOUSE LIKE I’M A HUMAN MOTHER CODDLING A DEFENSELESS BABY FROM THE WORLD. 

CG: YOU’RE A BRAVE PERSON 

CG: A ***GOOD*** PERSON. 

CG: YOU’RE LITERALLY PUSHING THROUGH ALL THIS SHIT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE AND YOU STILL FIND WAYS TO FAULT YOURSELF FOR HOW IT’S GOING. 

CG: WOOBIFYING YOU WOULD BE A DISSERVICE TO HOW MUCH YOU’VE DONE FOR YOURSELF ALREADY, SO I WON’T DO THAT HERE. 

CG: YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH HELL AND ARE STILL HERE KICKING AND FUCKING CRAWLING TOWARDS A HAPPIER FUTURE FOR YOURSELF 

CG: A CARBON COPY OF BRO WOULDN’T TRY. HE’D JUST DESTROY, HE WOULDN’T SECOND GUESS OR EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYING TO IMPROVE HIMSELF. 

CG: SO PLEASE, ENLIGHTEN ME. HOW THE EVERLOVING *FUCK* WOULD YOU EVER BE LIKE HIM? OR EVER BE ENOUGH OF A BURDEN TO ABANDON??? 

CG: ALL YOU DO IS WORK ON YOURSELF. THAT’S ADMIRABLE. THAT’S FUCKING INCREDIBLE, DAVE.

You suck your teeth and feel your lip begin to wobble. _Don’t cry, don’t cry._

Still, your eyes manage to well up with tears. Still, those tears fall. 

You make a broken little noise and bring your knees up to your chest, not understanding how Karkat could even think all those things about you, knowing what he does now. You hide your face in your legs and let the fabric of your pants soak up some of the liquid on your face.

After a few minutes, you finally feel okay enough to respond again, so you open your phone back up and ignore the fresh tears that track down your cheeks.

CG: OH SHIT. DID I GO TOO FAR? 

CG: I’M SORRY. I REALLY TOOK THAT AND RAN WITH IT. DIDN’T I? 

CG: DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO RESPOND TO ANY OF THAT 

CG: FUCK

You sniff and wipe your face. Maybe you should be up front with Karkat about this thing he does sometimes, too. You care about him a lot, but you can’t stand when he blames himself sometimes. Even though you do it, too.

It’s something you’ve both got to work on.

TG: dude you didnt go too far 

TG: i just started crying a bit because i guess it was all overwhelming 

TG: its still hard to hear sometimes 

TG: and harder to accept 

TG: but im not going to argue with you so i guess thanks for thinking all that shit about me 

CG: I MEAN EVERY WORD OF IT. 

TG: but you also have to stop blaming yourself for everything that happens 

TG: i know you have the tendency to think that every bad thing in the universe has happened bc of you but that aint true at all 

TG: maybe you should see a therapist 

TG: and im not saying that bc i wanna shove you off to someone else but because i think you deserve to feel good about yourself too 

TG: because believe it or not i feel the same way about you that you feel about me 

TG: even though you also wield the gauntlet of endless self-hatred 

CG: YEAH… MAYBE I SHOULD. 

CG: COULDN’T HURT, RIGHT? 

TG: yeah exactly man 

TG: theres too much to even begin to fucking touch in one conversation here 

TG: so im sure itll be uh 

TG: something we have to figure out as we go 

TG: but i really appreciate you karkat 

TG: like i was fully ready for you to dump my ass on the curb and i get thats my anxiety getting in the way but i really couldnt ask for a better boyfriend 

CG: WE’RE GOING TO FIGURE THIS OUT TOGETHER, DAVE. PROMISE. 

CG: THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED, EVEN THOUGH IT SEEMS ABSOLUTELY AWFUL. 

CG: I LIKE LEARNING MORE ABOUT YOU. 

TG: likewise 

TG: this has been a lot but if you think of any other questions you wanna ask just let me know 

TG: i have to go have my post-telling-someone freakout 

TG: which yeah isnt a sustainable practice but i dont got any alternatives yet 

TG: and freaking out in front of you isnt an option yet either 

TG: that being said 

TG: thanks for listening 

TG: and for being so amazing in every possible way 

CG: I COULD SAY THE SAME ABOUT YOU (:B 

CG: IF THERE’S ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP, LET ME KNOW 

CG: EVEN THOUGH I GET HOW THAT IS 

CG: I CARE ABOUT YOU. TRY TO GET A GOOD NIGHT’S REST. 

TG: i care about you too 

TG: night 

TG: <3 

CG: <3 

You take a deep breath and wipe the remainder of your tears away with the heels of your palms. Alright. You’re still here. Karkat doesn’t hate you. He’s in the loop, he’s not mad that you never told him, and you guys are going to figure things out together, even though it won’t be easy.

Fuck, you’re so lucky. 

There are no more tears left in your body to shed, so you curl up on your side and breathe through the anxiety. You can get through this. You already _got_ through the worst of it, right?

Bro’s dead. D knows. Dirk knows. Karkat knows.

Everyone still loves you. Your justifications for hating and blaming yourself are rapidly crumbling, just like your image of Bro is. If all these people are still here for you, then you must be wrong about yourself. Unless you’re all fooling them and are secretly manipulating them into thinking you're not a disgusting person?

But you think that’d be pretty dumb for you to believe at this point. You’re a bad liar. What made you think, for all this time, that you were still somehow tricking literally everyone in your life like that?

It’d be a pretty big accomplishment, that level of deception. You probably couldn't pull that shit off. Not subconsciously, at least.

So you must be what they think you are. You must be.

Still, it doesn’t make enough sense. None of it. Nothing makes sense anymore. It's all over the place. 

You can’t tell if you’re shaking because you’re still anxious, or because you’re relieved. Either way, you fall asleep feeling like, for once, you’re experiencing the beginning of something. Like, for once, you’re escaping the trap you've been trying to figure out for the better part of your life. 

It's confusing, uncomfortable, and hard, but you're done running from yourself. Bro failed. You're still here. 

You're still here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally, i was going to include some conflict between dave & karkat at this point but.... after all the growing theyve both been doing, it just didnt seem like the right last minute thing to do  
> so instead: support!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops, i had planned to write another chapter after this, but it really wrapped itself up on its own ):
> 
> so this is it. my first finished multi-chapter fic in years (since i wrote self-insert soul eater fics on ff.net, that is. lollll)   
> this has been a really good outlet for me these past few months and proof to myself that i can actually finish what i start. it's been a really valuable, cathartic experience 
> 
> thank you for joining me on this self-indulgent journey. and stay tuned for whatever i choose to write next if you want to! i have some one shots planned after this, some for this fic and some for "break it yourself." the dave angst train never leaves the station. im here forever.
> 
> okay, well.
> 
> here it is!

You can only truly describe the next few weeks as being _raw_. Sensitive. Tender.

It’s nearly painful, the way you feel in front of Karkat now that you've told him. It's like you're a new person. Or maybe it isn't that you're a new person now, but a more complete one. You guess you’ve finally shown him what you’ve kept hidden for so long. Hidden from him. Hidden from yourself. You're not a new person. You're just more _you_ now. More you than you've ever been.

You’re both still figuring out what your “boundaries” actually are, though, and that might take a bit longer to figure out. It's tedious and confusing and there are plenty of times when you feel like you’re going backwards. Times when you feel like telling him was a mistake, because even though things are still the same, essentially, they feel completely different. And you can never take it back, because he knows, and things will never be as simple as they once were.

Karkat’s in your room. He asks before holding your hand, then asks before leaning into you, then asks before kissing your cheek and—and it should make you happy. It does. It makes you so happy that he cares enough to be gentle with you. Thoughtful with you. But there’s still that stubborn, frustrated part of yourself that aches to be hurt in the way that you need to be hurt in order to feel _loved_. The sort of hurt that Bro would give you. The sort of hurt you're still trying to disentangle from your practice of healthy intimacy.

You know he means well. And asking him to stop would probably go over well; he's never given you a reason to think that he'd react badly. But you’re still struggling to accept that he’s going to treat you differently now, no matter what you say, or ask, or do. It’s unavoidable. He’s doing it to make you feel safer. It'd help to talk about it, you're sure. 

But instead, you snap at him.

One moment, you’re sitting against each other, both stiff and rigid as if you’ve never touched each other before. The next, you’re standing, breaking away from his arm, and suddenly so angry that you scrub your face with your hands before turning on Karkat and saying, “Can you stop fucking treating me like I can’t handle myself?” 

Karkat blinks at you. Once. Twice. Waits for you to come down. When he doesn’t yell back at you, you curl in on yourself and rub at your arms. “I didn’t mean that,” you say. “Sorry, I don’t know where that came from. I’m not upset with you. You’re just being kind and considerate and all that other shit. Of course I’m not upset with you. God. Fuck.” You bite back the impulsive ‘what’s wrong with me,’ comment that almost comes out. You’re not doing that shit anymore if you can help it.

You go back to scrubbing at your face though, as if that can wipe away all your unpleasant emotions. It’s like one moment you were fine, the next, you weren’t. The in-between is nonexistent, and the switch between the two is giving you fucking whiplash. Where is this coming from?

Karkat’s still watching you, and you suddenly feel stupid for snapping at him like that when he was just trying to be considerate. Trying to be considerate of your boundaries. But maybe too much so? You don’t know what you want. You don’t know what you need. You don't know what's too much, or too little, or good, or bad, you're so fucking mixed up it makes you want to tear your hair out and start screaming, uncharacteristically so.

Karkat’s still watching you. 

He looks like he has something to say, but he isn’t saying it. Is it embarrassing for him to watch you flip out like this? Fuck. It isn’t. Karkat would say it was fine, you don’t know why you’re so ashamed of acting like this. Karkat obviously doesn't mind sitting there, waiting for you to chill out. You don't know why you're so ashamed. You don't.

Scratch that. You know why, you just pretend it comes out of nowhere sometimes, like it’s not something that was beaten into you. You take a few deep breaths and drop your shoulders. With another deep breath, you let yourself sit back on the bed, though you don’t touch Karkat. Not yet.

“You okay?” Karkat asks, carefully watching his tone and expression. You can see it in the way his mouth seems to twitch at the corners, fighting to not react too harshly. Is he worried? Are you worrying him? You’re worrying him. Goddammit. 

“I don’t know why I freaked out like that, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Karkat says. All matter-of-fact, all sky-is-blue, water-is-wet on your ass. But it’s not. Can’t he see that? You don’t know how you’re doing, you don’t know what you need, you suddenly flip your shit at the drop of a hat, and he calls that _okay_? Karkat must see something in your expression, because he keeps going. “I can see you calling yourself shitty names from all the way over here. Or you’re jumping to stupid conclusions for no fucking reason. You’re okay, Dave. Okay?”

“Okay,” you parrot back, gulping in another deep breath of air to combat your sudden urge to start hyperventilating. He said it’s okay. Therefore. It is. Okay. “Okay.”

“Cool. Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know what there is to talk about,” you say before you can help it. Karkat shoots you another look and you can’t help but turn away from it. You're really regressing here, aren't you. “Or, erm. I don’t know what ‘it’ even is. That came out of nowhere.”

“Still,” Karkat leaves space between you but shifts a bit closer to where you’re seated at the absolute edge of the mattress. “It upset you.”

“I guess. I feel worse about blowing up at _you_ over it though. That wasn’t cool.”

“It’s not ideal, sure, but we can work with it.” Karkat looks so sure of what he’s saying, so you hold back on the impulse to argue with him about it. He’s right, you can work with it. Work through it. That’s what communication is all about, right? Even if it’s uncomfortable? Working through the things that need to be worked through?

You try to get through the discomfort, through the urge to run away from this conversation. The fact that you _don’t_ know what you want makes everything so much harder. “Yeah. We can work with it. Sorry, I’m trying to figure myself out. Guess we might butt heads while I’m getting the whole ‘knowing myself’ thing down, huh.”

“Yeah, guess we will.”

You run your hand over the comforter and stare at how the sheet moves under your fingers. Giving yourself a distraction helps ease your anxiety at least, and you look back up to Karkat after a few more minutes of silence. 

“It might be a while,” you warn, still struggling against the kindness you’ve been offered despite how desperately you want to cling to it. 

“Yeah, it might,” Karkat says simply. Like that’s something he’s totally fine with. 

You look back down to the sheets. “Boundaries are kinda fucked up, man.”

Karkat snorts at you. And you talk.

X

You read somewhere that to be truly angry at someone, you need to love them. You think back to Bro, as you tend to do when the concept of ‘love’ starts bothering you. Did he love you, then, because he was angry at you a lot? Do you love him, still? Because by the day, you’re becoming angrier and angrier at him.

It’s more complicated than any of that. You’re sure Bro felt something toward you, though you don’t think it was love. Maybe he loved you like a sick, twisted person may love the dog that keeps coming back no matter how many times it's kicked down. Maybe you loved him like that dog loves that sick, twisted person, just because you didn't know what real love felt like. 

You get stuck on tiny things like this. 

The quote doesn’t matter. Yet still, late into the night, it’s all you can think about. You’re recontextualizing the better part of your life, digging into your memories, begging to make sense of them. They never do end up making sense, and you’re not sure they ever will, at least not completely.

You’ll never get answers from Bro. You’ll never know exactly why he did what he did. Maybe it would be best to stop trying to figure him out.

Sometimes, people do bad things just because they want to. Just because they have the power to. 

It doesn’t have to be about love. It doesn’t have to mean anything, or it doesn't have to mean _everything_ , at least not like those quotes about love, hate, and forgiveness imply.

Sometimes, people do bad things. Just because they want to.

You think you loved Bro more than you could _ever_ love anyone else. It makes you sick to think about, but maybe it's unavoidable that you'd love him so much, or keep a part of your heart just for him, even after all these years. He did raise you, after all. You'll never escape what those years did to you. Is it strange to love Bro, even now? Is it twisted that you hate him, but still wish he was here sometimes? 

You hate that even after all this time, you still cling to the belief that you could've fixed Bro if you just... Tried harder. You hate that even after all this time, you don't think you'll ever stop comparing _this_ to _that_. The strange longing that follows these comparisons always makes you feel sick, confused, and upset. But it's unavoidable, isn't it?

You stare up at your ceiling. It’s beginning to look more familiar, more like it’s yours.

You loved Bro, but only because you had no other choice. Now you hate him, too. It’s more complicated than any of that, though, and you need to learn to accept that. Sometimes people do bad things. Sometimes that’s just that.

Sometimes you keep loving them regardless. 

And that, too, is just another thing you need to learn to accept.

X

Karkat touches the back of your neck and you flash step straight across the room. Your back flat against the wall before you even realize how dramatically you’re reacting to such a simple touch. Courtney would say it’s more than a simple touch: it has a history. One you can’t just erase. A simple touch turns complex, turns insidious. 

You’re learning how to be intimate with someone who knows so much about you. Turns out, learning includes a lot of panic. And even more readjustment. There’s something frightening about being touched by someone who _knows_ and still cares about you. With D, it’s different. He’s your guardian, and all his compassion comes from a place of healthy familial love. With Karkat, the suggestion of support is more overt, and it says something different than D’s love does.

It says, blatantly: _You’re still worth this type of love. You’re worthy of receiving a healthy version of the love. That healthy love you’ve been denied. You’re not disgusting. I still want to love you like this._ and that’s fucking scary. Because Karkat doesn't have to stay. He doesn't have anything to prove. Yet he's still here.

So, when you’re pressed up against the wall, fear reignited, you know that this is your body trying to make sense of Karkat’s touch. It’s trying to connect the past with the present, and that shit ain’t gonna fly. 

Karkat stays across the room while you calm yourself down. Slowly. You remind yourself that you don’t have to be hurt to feel loved, just like Courtney told you to tell yourself. You do that dumb thing with the ‘inner child’ shit that she told you to try out. You reach inwards, find the small Dave that knows what harm a simple touch can do, and tell him what you would’ve wanted to hear, what would’ve comforted him, what would’ve made him feel safe.

It sounds corny and self-help booky, but it helps. You hate that it helps, because it’s embarrassing, and feels shameful, even though you think it probably shouldn’t feel that way. 

You start with something simple. _You’re allowed to not want to be touched. If you want to be touched, you're allowed to feel good about it._

Your body continues to try to make something out of this. How can any touch from someone you love feel good? You remind yourself that touches can be good and bad. You remind yourself that you have the power to create a new definition of intimacy for yourself.

You and Karkat can have something that feels good. This isn’t the same, even if it feels the same.

Gradually, you calm down and slump away from the wall. Karkat isn’t holding back his worry, and you know he wants to apologize until he’s all flushed and out of breath, but you don’t want to hear it. You walk into his waiting arms, hold him, and let yourself be held. 

You’re allowed to not want to be touched. But you’re also allowed to _want_ to be touched. You’re allowed to seek out the comfort you want and detach from what feels bad.

The anxiety slowly seeps from your tense muscles and you relax in his arms. 

“This shit’s so messy,” you say, wanting to break the silence following your newest freak-out with a lighthearted jab. Karkat huffs into your neck and fists his hands in your shirt.

He makes a joke back about how it can’t possibly be messier than your room and you laugh, because yeah, you're a complete wreck.

He rubs your back and you relax further into him. It’s hard to feel like you’re allowed to have this, but he’s giving it to you, and you don’t want to wave his feelings away just because they're hard to understand. 

Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it's fake.

You’re learning together what it means to be vulnerable. Not just what it means to be _together_. 

You never thought you’d share this much of yourself with any one person. It’s hard. It’s messy.

It’s new. 

You think that facing this discomfort means that you’re finally growing.

X

Courtney says you’re doing a lot better lately. You find that hard to believe sometimes, because it feels like all you’ve been doing lately is having panic attacks, crying, and thinking too hard about shit that’s already over.

But you can see what she means. You’re letting yourself feel it all fully and wholly. You’re not building walls between parts of yourself or disavowing your feelings. You're not compartmentalizing like you used to, you're not dividing up your feelings into manageable categories. 

Raw. 

You’ve been exposed, maybe set free, and now you’re dealing with what it truly means to be DAVE STRIDER. You’re dealing with what it truly means to exist, and not just what it means to exist inside the parameters of what Bro found acceptable. 

The bottom line: you've spent years taking yourself apart and putting yourself back together again. Ever since your Bro died, you’ve been in a constant tug-of-war with your inner, baser instincts. To recover or not to recover? That really _was_ the question for the longest time.

You’ve never trusted your own judgments. You’ve never trusted yourself to know what parts of you are yours and what parts were left there by Bro. 

But you’re starting to realize that a lot of that shit doesn’t really matter, even if you get caught up in it a lot of the time. No one’s watching you, trying to determine if you’re being good enough to deserve your new life. Bro’s dead, his cameras are fucking gone, and no one is cataloguing your worth by the second. Or by the day. Or by how good or bad or whateverthefuck you are.

There’s something liberating—and terrifying—to this new way of life, this whole ‘living for yourself’ thing. And you’re not sure when you’ll get used to it. Maybe never, not completely at least.

The bottom line: it doesn’t matter what you think you deserve or don’t deserve. It doesn’t matter how fast or how slow you go with this, or how much you struggle or succeed. Because at the end of the day, the people who care about you don’t keep track of that stuff, or even care, because you can’t change their minds about you. Their love is already steady. Immutable. 

There’s nothing you can say to turn everyone against you because they already know. There’s nothing left to tell. Nothing left to hide. You have to face that now.

You’re loved. 

You’re more _Dave_ than you’ve ever been in your entire life, and you’re still loved despite that, or maybe, you’re loved because of that. Or even loved regardless?

It’s all still a little mixed up.

But when you wake up from another nightmare, you get up and go talk to D. Or you call Karkat, because he’s usually still awake. The Dave from a year ago wouldn’t have even dared to reach out like that.

It’s scary. You don’t know when it’s going to stop being scary. 

But you’re loved. 

And if you're loved by all these people, there's just no plausible way that you're as disgusting as you claim to be. There's just no way that you're as evil, as despicable, as broken as you've thought of yourself as. Tricking so many people just isn't that easy. You've clung to these negative views of yourself because of Bro. Because you never wanted to get your hopes up. Because you never wanted to have love snatched away from you again. Because you never wanted to be let down when the truth got out. You've always been afraid of what it would mean if you could be loved. What it would say about Bro. What it would say about you, about your innocence, in relation to what Bro did to you.

You've clung desperately to this belief that no one could _ever_ love the real you. 

But you're loved. 

Despite, or because of everything, you're loved.

And you’re starting to realize that the real “you” isn’t as bad as you made him out to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you again if you stuck with me this entire time, or even read this all the way through. there's something really powerful about vulnerability and the power of sharing experiences. i wouldnt be where i am today if i hadnt read niche fics that showed me i wasnt alone.
> 
> so thanks for sharing this experience with me, yet again. and thanks to everyone who commented with just as much (and more!) vulnerability while sharing their own experiences & connections to this fic.
> 
> you make writing worth all the effort.


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